


bloom (what would happen if we kissed?)

by amorremanet



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam & Shiro (Voltron) Friendship, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, As Lotor points out: it is technically a teaching assistant/student relationship, Autistic Keith (Voltron), Background Adam/Lotor (Voltron), But Shiro treats it like a teacher/student relationship bc, Gay Disaster Shiro (Voltron), Graduate Student Shiro (Voltron), Idiots in Love, Keith & Romelle (Voltron) Friendship, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Light Angst, Literary References & Allusions, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Lotor & Shiro (Voltron) Friendship, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Pining Shiro (Voltron), Romantic Soulmates, Seeing Colors Soulmate AU, Shiro (Voltron) is a Dork, Shiro (Voltron) is a Mess, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Teacher-Student Relationship, Wingman Lotor (Voltron), for someone who gushes so much about keith's footnotes & references to marxist philosophy, idiots to lovers, in fairness to Shiro: Keith is honestly just as stupid about his feelings, not exactly but that's the gist of his role, seriously they are so stupid about this and i'm so sorry, takashi shirogane is really such an idiot about…… y'know…… FEELINGS, they never dated in this reality & Shiro needs more friends, with a time-delay that exacerbates the mutual stupidity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-11-08 21:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20842580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorremanet/pseuds/amorremanet
Summary: College student Keith has never seen colors in his life, and honestly, he doubts that’s ever going to change. Understandable enough, if you ask Keith; after all, it’s not like anyone in their right mind would actuallywantto be with him. So much the better, he thinks—until he walks into LGBTQ Studies 227.PhD student Shiro has never seen colors either, unlike most of his paired-up friends. Worse, his attempts at dating only ever waste his time; none of the guys he’s met lately has held his interest, and the only thing they’ve challenged has been Shiro’s patience. He’s ready to give up on romance entirely—until a storm dressed as a student crashes into his grandmother’s first lecture of the new semester.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ailurea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailurea/gifts).

> Written for ailurea as part of the 2019 Sheith Flower Exchange. I’m so sorry for how late this is, but I hope that you enjoy it. ♡♡
> 
> Many thanks to Song, Mey, Alex, and Ink for helping me get this all written down, and for reading over all my drafts. ♡♡
> 
> The title was partially stolen from the same-titled Troye Sivan song, and partially from a line in “What Would Happen” by Meredith Brooks.

Knocking almost hard enough to hurt, Keith wonders why he bothers with his friends, sometimes. Too damn early on the first Tuesday of a new semester, and instead of getting himself breakfast or a good seat in the lecture hall, Keith’s here. The hallway swelters around him, outside will probably be worse, and yet, Keith bangs on the wide, gray slab that every dorm in this building calls a door.

At least pit-sweat probably won’t show, if he gets any before making it to Montgomery. Anyone who’s already found their soulmate might disagree, but this shirt is dark enough that it’s probably black, whatever “black” is. A so-called color that Mom likes for Keith, he knows that much. She likes it for him almost as much as the alleged color that she calls, “red.” Both of these colors, Keith has only seen as grayish blobs, but Mom assures him that red suits his passion, black reflects his intensity, and both look nice on him.

None of which helps Keith with this little bit of kindness he’d like to do for someone else today. If only his knocking would get him more than stares from the other people on this hall, everything would be great. Or tolerable, anyway.

When Matt finally opens up, he yawns through saying, “Lance isn’t here. And if you don’t believe that—”

“Bullshit, he isn’t here.” Keith huffs, but doesn’t roll his eyes. Matt’s only the messenger, here. No good sense in making him feel miserable or guilty about _Lance’s_ behaviors. “Tell him to get up and put his clothes on—”

“Actually, I’m supposed to tell you that he can’t go with you—”

“He signed up for Dr. Shirogane’s class of his own free will. So, yeah, he _can_—”

“Yeah, he thought you’d say that. Told me exactly what to tell you.” Slouching against the threshold, Matt fusses with his ponytail. Everything about his tight expression screams how much he wants to vomit. Deadpan, he recites, “Lance says, ‘Signing up doesn’t mean I need to go to every single session. Nothing worth a flip ever happens on the first day of a lecture. Mind your own business. Fuck off, Mullet.’”

“God, just—” Leaning around Matt’s shoulder, Keith calls into their room, “Tell me to fuck off yourself, Lance! Quit dragging Matt into your bullshit. He deserves _better_ than this.”

Over on the bed with the _Killbot Phantasm_ blanket hanging off the edge, something rustles. A vaguely person-shaped pile of sheets groans in that way Keith can only describe as _Lance Esparza Being Intransigent_. Rather than give Keith a decent response, Lance shoves one arm up. Squinting, Keith makes out a middle finger. If not for the heat and the rumble in his stomach, he’d go in there and bodily drag Lance out of bed. He could probably suffer through how hot it is, Lance’s whining sandpapers his nerves so much.

Watching Lance wave his finger around, Keith makes a mental note to get himself a couple boxes of Pop-Tarts later. Not a _good _breakfast by any means, but they’ll get him through taking matters into his own hands, next time Lance pulls this kind of stunt.

“Yeah, sorry, man,” Matt sighs. “That’s where dear Mr. Esparza stands on this, today.”

“Whatever. I’m sorry he put you in the middle.”

Because it’s polite and Matt hasn’t done anything wrong—not recently—Keith tries to smile. Matt deserves something nice, especially because he got screwed during the last housing lottery. The plan they hatched with Hunk had meant going in together, trying to get rooms in Douglas or Roget. Not only did they and Hunk get stuck in Napier, where they’ll suffer through the end of summer and probably die when it gets cold enough for the radiators to get turned on, but Matt also drew the shortest straw, in terms of roommates. A smile is the least of what Matt deserves.

Keith’s smile only lasts until he spots Lance’s middle finger, still waggling around like he’s practicing hypnosis.

“Hope you figure out who else is in the class, asshole,” Keith snaps. “Because you aren’t getting any notes from me.”

As he stomps down the stairs, Keith also hopes the grab-and-go place in the Montgomery Building has something decent he can eat. Lance’s bratty garbage rattled his nerves and there’s no way Keith will get through lecture without sustenance.

On the plus, not needing to wait for Lance’s asinine skincare regimen means Keith may have time to swing by “The Pub” for an egg-on-bagel sandwich. God help him, that thought makes Keith salivate like Pavlov’s dogs, which in turn makes him want to kick himself. He _knows better_ than to get like this over junk food. Having read the nutritional information so many times in the past year, he knows better than to think the egg-and-bagel sandwiches are anything _but _garbage.

Sure, those concoctions taste better than almost anything else available on campus, but they’re also wretchedly unhealthy grease-piles. Too many of them will fatten Keith up again, undo all the work he’s put into his body since he let himself go during freshman year. A late-game growth spurt helped him out, sprouting Keith up another two inches, but he never would’ve carved out these abs if he hadn’t fixed his diet and his gym habits. He would’ve stayed chunky if he hadn’t cut back on the egg-and-bagel calorie-traps.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Keith lets himself pause outside Harrison Center, which houses the so-called “Pub.” He blinks at the building’s façade, fake-bricks all pointedly mismatched, different sizes and shapes, none the exact same shade of gray as the others surrounding it. Why anyone thought this haphazard, piecemeal-looking stone veneer looked good, Keith doesn’t understand. Must be a soulmate-having person thing.

In fact, that’s the likeliest explanation, maybe the _only_ one. It’s always the same with human beings: someone finds whoever they’re meant to be with—the person, sometimes _people_, who sets their soul on fire but in a good way—then all of a sudden, they start slapping those allegedly beautiful colors together in ways that make no sense and might give you headaches if you can’t see those colors for yourself. Why can’t anyone ever be different? Why does finding your soulmate need to make people forget about everyone else on the fucking planet? One person cannot make that much difference in your life.

Regardless of what he wants, Keith rushes through going inside to grab some coffee and an apple. As soon as he has his breakfast, he huffs away. Until Keith can rein in his thoughts about soulmates more efficiently, he’s better off putting as much distance as he can between himself and anything that reminds him of his enduring romantic loneliness.

What he _should_ remember is how much better off he is without that kind of pressure in his life. Even if Keith ever does find his soulmate, nice things always backfire on him, whether he wants them for himself or tries to do them for someone else like with Lance just now. However things shook out, Keith would too likely screw them up with a hypothetical soulmate and make them hate him before his color vision has even remotely started waking up.

Maybe Keith’s already done that. The other night, he read a clickbait listicle that talked about soulmates who didn’t recognize each other for upwards of five years, all because the cones in their eyes didn’t activate quite right, or they had something wrong with their visual neurons, or dozens of other potential reasons. Knowing Keith’s luck, he has all of those problems and wouldn’t recognize his soulmate until they end up denouncing him in an interview with Anderson Cooper.

He supposes everything doesn’t need to be so hopeless, though. He’s made it this far without finding his soulmate, which means that he doesn’t _need_ to find them. As he slouches along the path to Montgomery Hall, flowers Keith doesn’t recognize poke out of the grass, showing off their easy lives—and silently promising that such a life could work for Keith as well. They don’t need to fuss with their buttons because it’s hotter than they expected, definitely too hot for the shirts they wanted to wear. They don’t need to worry about if they even _have_ a soulmate, much less what any hypothetical soulmates would think of them on a first meeting. They don’t need to twist themselves in knots for anybody.

Sounds really nice for the flowers, and like a really good way to live. Keith can’t deny: they have their shit together.

Unfortunately, he’s a human being, not a daisy. Unlike them, he’s stuck subjected to his own stupid, ultimately self-destructive desires. For all he nominally knows better, some horrible, empty feeling still aches in the pit of his chest, making him wish against all good sense that _something_ might jump out of the aether and point him toward his soulmate.

* * *

“All I mean to say, darling, is that you sound remarkably cynical about your romantic chances, even by _your_ standards.”

“That seems like an accurate statement.”

“It’s quite an unbecoming shade on you.”

“Honestly, Lotor? If there weren’t _millennia_ of objective proof that soulmates exist, I’d have some serious questions about that idea.” Underneath Shiro, the ladder teeters. But, much like everything else going on in his life, that threat amounts to absolutely nothing. “As it stands? I _do_ harbor misgivings about the notion that everyone on Earth has a soulmate. _Mine_ sure doesn’t seem to exist anywhere.”

“What, because you’ve had a somewhat more difficult run than usual, lately?” Before Shiro can even respond—in fairness, he _would_ confirm his best friend’s accusations—Lotor pinches the bridge of his nose. “How can you be this unspeakably dramatic, this early, on only _one_ cup of coffee?”

Shaking his head, Shiro squints at the buttons on the lecture hall’s projector. Whoever designed these things, they must’ve found their soulmate. Possibly soulmates, plural, what does Shiro know about their lives. All the grayish buttons and switches before him vary only slightly in their shades, which usually means that someone—one of those lucky people who’ve already found their soulmates—would swear the arrangement makes more sense if you can see color. Since Shiro can’t, he counts from the projector’s left-hand side and hopes he presses these buttons in the right order.

Thirty-one years old and never once has Shiro felt any of the pangs or throbs that, he’s heard, accompany finding one’s soulmate. Almost makes him wish his extended loneliness were some kind of world record. At least then, he’d have something like a consolation prize.

“Darling, _please_,” Lotor sighs wearily. “The date Adam set you up with cannot have gone so horridly that you have seen fit to entirely give up on love.”

“Maybe your boyfriend needs better taste in men, present company excluded. The guy got offended that I said anything remotely critical of _Hamilton_ and started passive-aggressing at me,” Shiro says. “Besides, he’s part of a pattern. Before him, we had the one who thought I was stuck up for reading and going to the gym. Before _that_, I let Kara set me up with her cousin, which was great until Jeff started bringing out the good old, ‘Me so horny’ garbage. Then, I got through two nice dates until Stephen decided that he couldn’t date a man who doesn’t like _The Notebook_—”

“You hadn’t yet confirmed your opinions on the movie,” Lotor points out, probably arching his eyebrows in the way he always does when he knows that Shiro can’t argue with him. “You could have continued not mentioning it and given him time to know you better—”

“Unethical. We’ve been over this.”

“Relative to the behaviors that _some_ people exhibit in regards to love—”

“Then that’s fine for _some people_.” Since Lotor can’t see his reaction and rightfully call out his petulance, Shiro lets himself roll his eyes. He gets right back to work, though. One last switch to flick, but which one is it? “I think that they should examine their life choices and take a better, more respectful approach to romance, but I guess that’s none of my business. More power to them. I hope they’re very happy.”

“Yet you rule out the idea of your own happiness.”

“I _do not_—”

“Claiming that you may never find your soulmate—”

“Does not mean that I’ve given up—”

“Certainly sounds as though you have resigned yourself—”

“To the fact that the universe doesn’t want me to find my soulmate,” Shiro clarifies, for all he probably won’t be listened to. “_Not_ to the idea that he doesn’t exist and I’m doomed to eternal romantic isolation or whatever you think I’m feeling.”

Lotor hums as the screen at the back of the stage flickers to life, projecting the image of Obaasan’s desktop. Behind her two rows of neatly organized icons, an old photo beams out at everyone, bright and probably quite pretty for everyone who can see color. Even knowing that his grandmother uses this shot as her wallpaper, Shiro tilts his head and peers at the picture bemusedly, as if seeing it for the first time.

Not that it’s a bad picture by any means, but Dad, Obaasan’s son, was behind the camera for it. Sitting out in L.A.’s Orozco Gardens, Mom smiles as if nothing in the world has ever gone wrong. She leans to her left, one palm splayed on the picnic blanket to prop her up while chubby six-year-old Kashi sticks wildflowers—honeysuckle and primroses, she’d told him—all over her long black ponytail. It makes Shiro’s stomach lurch, the way this image of his younger self grins like he’s so pleased with his own alleged cleverness. But the picture makes Obaasan happy, which is the important thing, he supposes.

“Regardless of the semantics,” Lotor pipes up, “your attitudes toward the idea of romantic love give me cause for concern—”

“We can’t all have found our soulmates before age thirty—”

“My happiness with Adam has no bearing on my feelings—”

“It biases you about this—”

“The fact that you won’t even _consider_ withholding such irrelevant information such as—”

“Obaasan?” Hopping down to the hardwood floor, Shiro looks to the instructor’s desk, slightly off from center-stage. Although Obaasan taps at her laptop’s keys as if she can’t hear the conversation, her enigmatic little smirk suggests otherwise. “Obaasan, please tell him that I’m right, he’s wrong, and good ethics are absolutely _essential_ in romance.”

She shrugs, and says nothing until she’s pulled up the first slide of her introductory PowerPoint. “The fact that you’re right about the ethics of lying by omission doesn’t mean that you should discount Lotor’s other points _or_ dismiss his concerns.” With her visual aids ready, Obaasan turns to face Shiro. “You never know when your soulmate could find you, Kashi. Closing yourself off to the possibility of finding love at such a young age—that could do you more harm than good.”

“You see what I mean, darling?” Although his expression screams earnestness, Lotor’s posture radiates smugness. Shaking out his beyond-waist-length ponytail, he says, “If you refuse to listen to me, then please, do yourself a multitude of favors and listen to your grandmother.”

“I _am_ listening; the situation you’re talking about doesn’t exist.” Arms crossed, button-up shirt all but outright chafing as it tugs around his chest, Shiro sits on the edge of the TA’s desk. He wouldn’t mind crawling into his backpack and disappearing into a pocket universe, if these inquiries are a sign of how his day’s going to go. Too bad that’s not an option. “I’m not _giving up _on love or anything like that—”

“You had _best_ not—”

“I won’t, Obaasan—”

“I will _not_ stand for my only grandson surrendering to an exaggerated despair and letting heteronormative social forces—”

“I _won’t_.” Perhaps arguments like this are what Shiro gets for entertaining Lotor’s initial line of questioning. Maybe they’re comeuppance for letting Adam try to set him up with someone in the first place. Shiro could’ve brought it on himself somehow. Regardless of where the true blame falls, Shiro insists, “Even if I _were _giving up—which, let’s remember, _I am not_? My choice about this matter isn’t a problem. How could it be? Seriously, you two talk like my soulmate is going to walk into the lecture hall in the next five minutes.”

Then again, nobody comes into the lecture hall in the next five minutes.

In fact, they’re halfway into the seventh minute without an arrival before the door finally crashes open. Obaasan and Lotor don’t look up, immersed in a chat about his struggle to officially propose his dissertation. Dimly, Shiro curses his own curiosity. If he’d stayed focused on his and Adam’s game of Words With Friends, Shiro wouldn’t catch this an unfiltered glimpse of the most beautiful person he’s ever seen.

A tempest crammed into a slim physique, the newcomer shakes out a mop of longish, dark hair. Head bowed, they barrel down the aisle on the longest legs that Shiro’s seen outside of Lotor’s. With a soft groan, they dump their backpack onto one of the front-row tables—and from this closer vantage point, any groaning seems unnecessary. Pale except for an elaborate, half-sleeve tattoo, the first arrival’s biceps give Shiro a show as they drape a short-sleeved button-up on the back of their chair. Not that they do much, this person’s biceps; they don’t have much to do right now besides existing and making Shiro’s breath snag in his throat.

With sculpting like that, though, this guy’s biceps don’t _need_ to do much to dazzle Shiro. They could too easily come off as flashy. Shiro only manages to look away because the newcomer raises those arms over their head, stretching out their back and shoulders. As their dark tank-top inches upward, they do nothing about tugging it back into place, about covering a set of diamond-cut hip-bones.

When they’ve settled down, they duck back into the aisle. They dart around the table, advancing on the stage. Then, the newcomer does the worst of all possible things: they blink right at Shiro.

On its own, that gaze might not matter—but the newcomer doesn’t have just any eyes. Wide and alert, framed by thick, dark lashes, those eyes seem to sparkle. Trying to meet them makes Shiro’s heart flail helplessly. He can’t tell if the newcomer’s eyes are dark or light, much less where they fall on the spectrum of allegedly colorful grays. All Shiro knows is that, as the newcomer furrows their brown and frowns at him, he can’t look at anything else. Only those eyes.

“Are you… You’re not… You can’t be…” With a soft huff, they let their shoulders droop. “Is this… LGBTQS two-twenty-seven?” Getting a nod out of Shiro, they pout bemusedly. “Queer Literatures, Histories, and Cultures?”

“Unless there’s some _other_ LGBTQS two-twenty-seven scheduled for this semester? Yeah, that’s us.” Crossing downstage, Shiro unfolds his arms and shoves his thumbs through his belt-loops. He read, once, that standing like this might make him seem less unreachable and imposing, even with his height and his broad shoulders. “You’re a student?”

“Yeah, but _you’re_, like, someone from IT, right? I mean, you _can’t_ be Dr. Shirogane.”

Dimly, Shiro wants to say that he’s working on it, though he hasn’t joined those ranks yet, but—oh, wow, the line-work on that tattoo gets more impressive, the closer he and the newcomer get to each other.

“Unless you’re gonna tell me that your name is Murasaki and I shouldn’t judge by outside appearances?”

The newcomer shakes their head as if doing so magically illuminates the point they think they’re making. It doesn’t, but somehow, their hair looks even prettier, all tousled like that. If not for _first lecture of the semester_ looming over them, Shiro might offer to take them somewhere and—_no, dammit_. Shiro bites the inside of his chin; any other use of physical sensation to ground himself might draw attention that he’d rather not deal with, right now. Still, the newcomer’s here for Obaasan and propositioning him first thing in the morning would be rude.

Apparently failing to notice anything amiss with Shiro, the newcomer continues, “Then, I guess you’d need to cover how you found the Fountain of Youth somewhere? Because there’s no other way you could’ve published _Acolytes, Lilies, and Wonderful Women: Locating Queer Japanese and Japanese-American Histories_ in 1997. You would’ve been, like, _ten_.”

_Nine_, Shiro almost corrects them, but—“Oh, you mean—I—” Shiro worries a hand through his hair. “My grandmother, she—she’s the Dr. Shirogane you’re looking for. I mean, you also could’ve meant her husband or my aunt, or_ probably_ not my parents, but—”

“Sorry, yeah, you’re… what, exactly? Sitting in on your grandmother’s class?” The student quirks their shoulders, and God help him, under different circumstances, Shiro could leave a forest of hickeys all over the dip and angles of their collarbone.

Instead, he focuses and says, “Serving as her TA, actually.” He extends his hand. “_Takashi_ Shirogane. Not a doctor yet, but I’m working on that. Either way, it’s always nice to meet someone who appreciates Obaasan’s work.”

As the newcomer reaches for the handshake, Shiro could swear that he sees a flash of… something. He couldn’t begin to guess what it is. But he curls his hand around this guy’s, the newcomer returns the gesture, and ever so briefly, something changes in his face. The shift flickers away before Shiro can determine anything or decide what he’s seeing, but—inexplicably, _impossibly_—Shiro can’t shake off thoughts of flowers.

Perhaps, though, that’s more to do with the tattoo snaking up this guy’s arm. Now that they’re closer to each other, Shiro makes out the shape of a dragon. Neither fully European nor a true Japanese _ryū_, the great serpent winds its way through a collection of different petals and blossoms. Clear, strong lines surround gray blobs that must look gorgeous to anyone who’s already found their soulmate; whoever did this piece put in too much effort for the dragon or his garden to look ugly.

Giving Shiro’s hand one last squeeze, the guy says, “Keith Kogane, and I swear? I normally don’t get to class this early. But I thought it’d be harder to get a seat if I _didn’t_, so…? Here I am, I guess?”

Although he doesn’t allow his face to crack, Shiro feels something inside him shatter. From zero to heartbreak without exchanging numbers, much less going on a single date—even with his tragic history in love, this must be a record. Worse, Shiro can’t do anything to fix his situation, this time. Ethically speaking, flirting with a student would make lying about his movie preferences look like a pathetic joke.

Could be worse, though, Shiro guesses, watching Keith choose where he wants to sit. Shiro’s laptop could fritz out instead of cooperating while he sets it up. Or he could’ve slept with Keith, _then_ found out that he’s a student. Getting a taste of him—_any_ taste of him, no matter how small—might’ve killed Shiro’s ability to behave himself and respect the sacrosanct boundaries that exist between Teacher(’s Assistant) and Student.

In a way, Shiro’s almost grateful for the dull throb behind his eyes. Unless something happens to make Keith Kogane drop this course, he’ll need to endure an entire semester with someone like this sitting right in front of him, so close but barred from Shiro’s reach for several very important reasons. Shiro _deserves_ to get some air—never mind some water and an aspirin—before diving headlong into that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Personal reactions/interpretations
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
>   * Comments made with the [LLF Comment Builder](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/post/170952243543/now-presenting-the-llf-comment-builder-beta).
> 
> The author reads and appreciates all comments, and gets back to all of them eventually, but may be slow to reply due to trying to rein in the ADHD/anxiety cocktail.
> 
> If, for any reason, you don’t want to receive a reply, just put, “whisper” near the start of your comment, and I’ll appreciate it without replying.


	2. Chapter 2

Despite this morning’s whiny antics, Lance bothers showing up to the discussion group after lunch. Swanning into the classroom like he wants someone to worship him for existing, he barely glances at anyone else before he decides where to sit. As he flits away from the door, Lance has the perfect opportunity to sit on his own and mind his damn business for once—but of course, he can’t do that.

Instead of making anything easy, Lance eases himself into the desk at Keith’s right. He makes himself at home with the air of someone who genuinely thinks he belongs there, then grins as if he knows something salacious that Keith doesn’t. When Keith only deigns to shrug at him. Lance pouts. His expression reminds Keith of the face Allura makes whenever someone confronts her with the fact that most people can’t afford genuine Prada shoes, actual Thierry Mugler handbags, and ten-day spring break trips to Monaco, not even if she pays for the hotel in full.

Fuck, Keith probably couldn’t even buy that sort of luxury for his Sims without an infinite money cheat.

“Jeez, why so grumpy?” Twisting around in his seat, Lance angles himself toward Keith. He waits—for what, Keith has no idea—but judging from the way Lance huffs, he doesn’t get whatever he thinks that he wants. “Maybe you’d be in a better mood if you’d slept in today like I did, Mullet.”

“I doubt it,” Keith mutters, slumping in his seat. “While you were skipping, I met the hottest guy I’ve ever seen—”

“But turned out, he was straight? Which you’ll probably wanna whine about at Allura?” Lance’s face-straining grin falters when Keith shakes his head. “Turned out that… Mr. Handsome already has a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend, since—I don’t know—maybe he’s bi, or pan, or something? Or does he have a non-binary date-friend? Perhaps of the soulmate variety? Was he wearing some, ‘I’m too aro for this’ shirt like Pidge—”

“No, you idiot, he’s just…” Keith groans into his palm. “He’s way out of my league, okay? The sort of guy who people write love songs about.”

Skeptically, Lance snorts. “Quit exaggerating.”

“I’m not. Why would I—”

“No guy on this campus could possibly be that hot—”

“_This_ guy **_is_**. He’s every stupid, amazing, unfair thing you could imagine, all in one person.”

“Pics or he doesn’t exist.”

“He _does_, though, and it’s _horrible_.” In theory, Keith doesn’t need to indulge Lance about any of this—except leaving Lance to his own devices almost always ends bad for everyone involved. At least, this way, he stays focused on Keith instead of spreading himself around. “This guy is too good to be real. Hot, smart, a perfect smile and gorgeous pecs—if he hasn’t met his soulmate yet, there’s still no way I’m it because that _isn’t_ how the universe works.”

“_Ugh_, would you _can it_?” Lance rolls his eyes as if doing so makes him right. “Assuming your hot guy _does_ exist, why _couldn’t_ you be his soulmate?”

“Because he’s so far out of my league, we’re playing totally different games. What part of that doesn’t make sense—”

“How about the part where it’s a bunch of bullshit?”

“Whatever, okay? It doesn’t _matter_.”

Keith doesn’t mean to snap at Lance so much. A little bit, sure, but not enough to make Lance’s eyes go wide like this. Definitely not enough to make him jerk back like someone’s smacked him. Obnoxious and irritating or not, Lance is technically Keith’s friend. You’re supposed to do better by your friends than this. Lashing out at them over things that they didn’t do and obviously had no hand in? Keith’s bullies from middle school would’ve done that; he, of all people, ought to know better.

Taking a deep breath doesn’t steady Keith’s nerves any. Neither does the second, or the third, or the fourth, or tugging his fingers through his hair so hard, it’s a miracle he doesn’t yank a whole clump of it out.

Mostly, these attempts at calming down make him wish he could reconsider his personal policies about skipping class.

Well, strictly speaking, he _could_ reconsider, in that he certainly could think about leaving. He could actually leave, if he wanted to, at that. Dr. Shirogane’s syllabus allows everyone three unexcused absences from her lecture and three from the discussion groups led by her unreasonably attractive grandson. In theory, Keith could run to the nearest restroom, broom cupboard, or stairwell, then have the quietest meltdown he can manage, and it wouldn’t drag his final grade down. As long as he didn’t burden anyone or make a nuisance of himself, there might not be any consequences whatsoever.

But doing that would waste Mom and Dad’s money, which wouldn’t be right. After all the work Keith’s done to get here and the work his parents have done to keep him here, Keith can’t skip without spitting on multiple people’s efforts and sacrifices. Piss poor way to repay the people who believe in him despite all the evidence about why they shouldn’t.

If not for the classroom filling up around them, Keith would curl his legs onto his seat. He’d fold himself up to a fetal position, hug his shins, and pray that making himself as small and unobtrusive as possible might do literally anything to help him feel better.

At the very least, curling up like that might give him more room to ignore the spoiled brat jut of Lance’s lower lip and the plaintive way he makes his eyes sparkle at Keith. Being able to ignore Lance’s face might help Keith feel better about how much he has to harsh Lance’s current fixation. For all his faults, Lance generally _does_ want to help his friends—a group that Keith _technically_ belongs to, by virtue of Allura, Hunk, Matt, and Romelle all more or less liking him—and taking away a chance to help tends to make Lance feel useless.

Still, needs must. Better to nip this lily in the bud. Letting flowers like that blossom only leads to stupid cats trying to eat their toxic petals.

“Sorry for snapping at you,” Keith mutters. “But it really doesn’t matter who Shiro’s soulmate is—”

“Why _not_,” Lance whines without actually asking a question. “That soulmate could be _you_.”

“Except he’s _not_, so quit being _stupid_.”

“It’s not stupid! I am _just saying_: you won’t know for sure until you _kiss him_, right?”

“What, the whole ‘true love’s first kiss tells you who’s your soulmate’ thing? That’s a fairy tale, Lance.”

“But one with a basis in fact, though!”

“Nobody can prove that, and you know it.” Mussing his fingers through his floppy bangs, Keith racks his brain for anything he can say that _won’t_ make Lance try giving him some bullshit, one-man self-esteem intervention. “Anyway, you haven’t met Shiro, so you don’t _know_ how hot he is. Maybe, if you’d come to class? You’d know that I’m right. Besides, even if Shiro _weren’t_ obviously too good for me, nothing can happen between us, so—”

Before Keith can finish that thought, a knock on the door cuts him off. The sound smacks into him, as if the universe cued it up to punish Keith specifically and teach him a lesson or ten about talking about hot people behind their backs.

Standing in the threshold, Shiro quirks those broad, beautiful shoulders and gives a bashful smile. “Hope I’m not running too late or anything, folks? I promise: this won’t happen again—or I’ll try to prevent it happening again. Today, I just lost track of time at lunch, and my phone died, and I forgot to ask my friend what time it—”

“You’re fine, man!” Lance calls to him, waving like he wants to invite Shiro over and offer him a seat. “Teacher’s not here yet anyway. Sit down before we hit the, ‘Fifteen minutes and everyone can leave’ marker.”

Lips pursed and gaze zeroed in on Lance, Shiro arches a quizzical eyebrow. Even in the face of Lance grinning like his attitude should endear him to absolutely everyone, Shiro says nothing. Once he’s dumped his stuff on the instructor’s desk, he answers Lance in the best way: picking up a dry-erase marker and scrawling on the whiteboard, “_Shirogane Takashi / 銀貴 / _**_しろがね たかし_**_”_

On a second line, he scribbles, _“Shiro / 白 / _**_しろ_**_”_

Keith knows he shouldn’t, but he can’t help snickering. He can practically feel Lance’s jaw slam into his desk.

Facing the class properly, Shiro loops one thumb through his belt-loop and drags the other hand through his hair. “So,” he says, “as everyone who actually came to _lecture_ this morning knows, my name is Shiro and I’m your TA for this semester.”

Lance sinks in his seat as if Shiro’s specifically referring to him. Were Keith in a somewhat more generous mood, he might scribble a note that Lance wasn’t the only person who skipped their first lecture. Keith doesn’t recognize three of the faces around them, and there’s another two who he’s shared classes with before but didn’t see this morning. Clearly, more than a few people on this campus have shared Lance’s opinion about the first day of any given class.

On the other hand, Lance refused to leave well enough alone when Keith asked him for that, gave Keith Hell about getting out of bed today, and once again, ran his mouth about things that he doesn’t understand. Plus, Shiro keeps shifting his back _just so_, and every time he does, his pecs strain his poor button-up until it could burst. Needing to look away from Shiro—even for a moment, even in the name of putting Lance’s mind at ease—sounds like a cruel and unusual punishment that Keith categorically does not deserve.

“Since we did _not_ previously cover this and anticipating someone’s question: yes, I am related to the Dr. Shirogane teaching this class; she’s my grandmother.” Shiro inhales deeply, eyeing the students before him like he expects someone to protest. No one does, though, so he goes on, “Under most circumstances, in most other cases, a choice like this would very likely constitute nepotism. However, the department approved me as Obaasan’s TA because they believed that, as her grandson, I have the unique and magical ability to _rein in_ her headstrong, argumentative spirit. If you'll allow me a brief family anecdote? I can clear up any lingering confusion for you pretty easily.”

Perched on the edge of his desk, Shiro actually pauses, blinking out at the class as if he needs their permission to continue. This might be the cutest thing Keith’s ever seen another person do—which is honestly unfair. More unfair than the problem of Shiro serving as Keith’s TA and being therefore off-limits to ask out, even. No human being should have those broad shoulders, that diamond-cutting jawline, and those muscular arms and thighs while simultaneously being so adorable. That Shiro has the capacity to do all those things at once must mean he’s secretly made of magic.

Not literally, because unfortunately, that would make Keith’s life interesting and cool. But Shiro’s close enough.

“So,” he starts, gently tapping his thumbs against the desk. “Once upon a time, when I was ten, my parents knew that I was bored at school. They liked the idea of Obaasan spending extra time with me and doing a two-person book-and-movie-club, _but_ they wanted to put some limits on what we read or watched. They thought that…” Trailing off, Shiro frowns in Keith and Lance’s direction. “…Yes? You in the Kesha shirt?”

Lance bounces in his seat as he drops his hand. “Were your parents, like? Crazy pro-censorship or something?”

“Oh, no. Absolutely not.” By way of emphasizing his point, Shiro shakes his head. “They believed in creative freedom; they just wanted to be sure that the books and movies Obaasan gave me were age-appropriate. So, Mom and Dad suggested some books that they thought I might enjoy and they gave Obaasan some guidelines for choosing.”

In all likelihood, there’s a point to these pauses. Maybe Shiro, like Lance, used to be some kind of theatre kid. Maybe he appreciates the art, craft, and process of weaving a yarn in ways that most people don’t. Maybe he thinks these pauses are necessary—but they might kill Keith before the semester’s even halfway done. With only a small, faint smile, Shiro makes Keith’s heart rattle and clang like a poltergeist. Thank fuck he keeps talking. Too much silence could let everyone hear what’s happening inside Keith’s chest. If his heart doesn’t give out on him, then Keith’s going to humiliate himself.

“The first book Obaasan and I read together was Yukio Mishima’s _Confessions of a Mask_. You’ll all read it for yourselves in a few weeks, so I won’t spoil anything major? But an early scene involves Mishima-san’s loosely autobiographical narrator pleasuring himself to Guido Reni’s paintings of Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom.” Inhaling deeply, Shiro pushes his longer floof of hair back off his forehead. “For everyone who didn’t grow up Catholic or isn’t up on this particular piece of queer art history? Saint Sebastian, an unofficial patron of queer people, is traditionally depicted as a gorgeous pretty boy, either bound and shot full of arrows, or sprawled out in the immediate aftermath of that. Jerking off to these paintings is an early step in Kochan eventually coming to know himself as a gay man.”

Lance splutters at that statement. Throughout the classroom, several other people gasp. For his own part, Keith feels his eyes trying to bug clean out of his skull. Despite the shock, he scoots his chair closer to his desk and leans toward Shiro. Keith figured from her books, her essays, and her four different TED Talks that Dr. Shirogane had to be some kind of firestarter. He might have underestimated, though, and God, he needs to hear more.

Oblivious to his effect on people (Keith hopes), Shiro goes on, “After my Mom and Dad objected to _Confessions of a Mask_, Obaasan decided on the first movie we’d watch together: Kaneto Shindo’s _Onibaba_.”

During this pause, Shiro glances around in search of anyone who recognizes what he’s talking about. Only Ryan Kinkade, over on the other side of the room, perks up at all. That makes sense; Keith doesn’t know Ryan very well, but one thing he learned while Ryan and Hunk were going out is that Ryan loves movies.

“That movie, I won’t spoil because _Onibaba_ comes with even more content warnings than _Confessions of a Mask_. It’s a classic of horror cinema and, personally, I’m only slightly less fond of it than Obaasan is.” Shiro waggles his eyebrows like he wants to race a motorcycle down the steep hill on the western side of his hometown, the one that Keith grew up calling _Dead Man’s Drop_. “_But_ there are also several scenes that I didn’t fully appreciate at that age, or that I understood just enough for my parents to worry that I wasn’t ready to watch them. When Mom and Dad tried to confront his mother, though? She strenuously disagreed with them that I wasn’t ready.”

Sighing, Shiro tugs on that forelock again. Bleached so much brighter than his dark hair, his floof _should_ strike Keith as impossibly pretentious, like the hipster fucks at Allura’s favorite indie coffee-shop. Practically everyone working at Ground Down Under has multiple differently shaded streaks of gray littered through their buns, braids, undercuts, and ponytails, showing off how they have either soulmates, the privilege of not caring how ridiculous they look, or exactly zero fucks to give about anything that wasn’t posted on some indie band’s official Instagram.

Shiro, on the other hand, only makes Keith’s chest flush warm as he pushes his floof back off his face.

“My point in all this being,” he says, “that Obaasan does what she wants, when she wants, and only ever in the manner that she most wants to do things. I can’t quote-unquote _‘rein her in’_ and I’m not going to try.” With a tired huff, Shiro folds his arms over his chest. His eyes gleam so earnestly that it feels like Keith has talons clawing up his lungs and a marching band going to town against the inside of his skull. Everyone else must feel the same, though; Keith isn’t special for feeling this way. Unless someone isn’t attracted to guys, there’s no way they could resist Shiro.

Without noticing a thing, Shiro continues, “What I _can_ do for you—what I _want_ to do as your TA—is to help you get the most out of this class. I can break down material in ways that you might understand better. I can explain Obaasan’s assignments or feedback more clearly, if anything on the syllabus confuses you, or if you don’t get what she means with any comments on your work. Please understand: you _are not bothering me_ by asking for help at any point, this semester. If you need help with anything, _please. do. ask_.”

Shiro smiles like he genuinely believes that. Dammit, he makes Keith want to believe him, too.

Worse, he glances right at Keith, and Keith’s entire body floods with heat. He clasps his hands together on the desk, digs his fingertips in hard. Stifling a gasp, Keith quietly thanks the pain for keeping him grounded. Hopefully, no one notices. Aside from how Lance might tell Allura and Romelle, who would then worry, Keith doesn’t need to deal with any potential questions about why getting smiled at makes him fall to pieces. He doesn’t need Shiro spotting his trembling fingers and white knuckles, then thinking that it’s his fault.

Finally, before Keith can let everyone decide that he’s a headcase, Shiro looks away. As if nothing is or ever has been wrong, he asks Lance to kick off today’s introductions. Watching Shiro’s gaze drift around the room, Keith winces. Something hot and sharp flares up behind his eyes. He chokes down a groan, but that doesn’t stop the pain.

Forcing his eyes open, Keith furrows his brow. Something about Shiro’s shirt looks _wrong_.

It’s no tighter on him than it was this morning. His pecs and shoulders don’t push any more intently on the buttons or pull any harder on the seams. The fabric still hugs Shiro’s body like it was painted on—but something about it seems… darker? But brighter at the same time? Richer, maybe? Regal, definitely, and something about it reminds Keith of a garden. His lips quiver as his mouth floods with a sweet-and-tart taste, like the plums that grow behind Kolivan and Antok’s house. A neutral, pleasant taste follows it, like the eggplant casserole that Thace makes every Christmas.

Somehow, Keith knows that whatever’s going on with Shiro’s shirt, it perfectly offsets the warm shades that have splashed themselves down his neck and exposed collarbone. His skin doesn’t match with his shirt, but they still look nice together. Shiro’s shirt has a warmth of its own, different from whatever’s happening to Shiro’s skin, and these colors…

……_No_.

No, that can’t be right.

Keith _cannot_ be seeing colors. Not over Shiro. Because Lance is wrong about them being soulmates, because Shiro is so obviously out of Keith’s league, and the universe does not work according to Lance’s stupid, rom-com fantasies.

Shutting his eyes, Keith shakes his head. His hair rushes around him, flopping like Kosmo’s fur when he comes in from the rain. Digging his nails into the back of his hand, Keith prays for everything to please, stop jerking him around. Please, can he set things right and please, let reality stop getting his hopes up over things that cannot come to pass.

When Keith opens his eyes again, the world’s back to normal: nothing special, only the same old shades of gray.

Disappointing and lonely, exactly as it should be.

* * *

As the third week of classes comes to a close, Shiro can’t believe it isn’t actually October yet, if not later. The way each day has dragged its feet lately, more time definitely should’ve passed. Halloween should have snuck up on him with Thanksgiving looming right outside the door, then finals, and then the semester’s end and winter break. All of the colorful paper cut-out ghosts and pumpkins hanging on the graduate assistants’ office walls, they should be stragglers who’ve technically overstayed their welcome. No one’s taken them down yet, but someone should have done because Halloween is _over_, right?

Except, when Shiro checks his phone for the umpteenth time today, the screen mocks him with its insistence that it’s still September. Not only that, but they haven’t even passed the equinox, much less gotten anywhere close to Halloween. Across the table, a wrapper crinkles as Lotor opens another of the mint Aero Bars that he picked up this summer, when he and Adam went to Vancouver for their anniversary.

“Perhaps,” Lotor drawls, “you should consider suspending your usual commitment to ethics—”

“No. No, absolutely not—”

“Would you permit me _two minutes_ to finish my—”

“Nothing about your idea is remotely feasible—”

“How can you purport to judge my idea when you’ve barely even considered—”

“I don’t _need_ to consider _anything_.” Groaning so softly that he barely hears himself, Shiro slips off his black plastic-framed reading glasses. One solid pinch to the bridge of his nose, and he insists, “Whatever you’re suggesting, I don’t want to hear it. I’m _not_ doing it.”

Huffing, Lotor blows on his cowlick. “Your love life will continue to bore and frustrate you unless you’re willing to take a risk, darling.”

“In romance, ‘risk’ means things like, ‘Going on a date with a guy even though he usually prefers guys who are shorter than he is.’ What _you’re_ talking about…” Shiro shakes his head. “The ethical issue at hand isn’t as petty as, ‘Am I lying by omission if I don’t mention my negative feelings about _The Notebook_.’ It’s _serious_, Lotor. And _complicated_.”

Lotor hums as though he’s seriously considering this, then needles, “Does Keith particularly enjoy _The Notebook_?”

“Not that it’s any of your business—_or_ mine, for that matter—but no, he doesn’t.” Dimly, Shiro feels an impulse telling him to stop—but the pointed, _knowing _arch of Lotor’s brows eggs him on. Shiro can’t let Lotor think he’s lying. “Keith thinks that _The Notebook_ is a completely garbage excuse for a romance, overridden with tedious clichés, and more than that? He agrees with me that it’s a joke anyone thinks Noah is a _hero_ when he basically stalks Allie, uses their past as leverage without knowing anything about her life anymore, and threatens to kill himself—which is a form of _abuse_—to make her take him back.”

For several moments, Lotor only manages to blink at Shiro.

The silence hovering between them grates at Shiro’s nerves like a nail-file. One wrong move and he could vomit—a fact exacerbated by the smug smirk that spills over Lotor’s face. His lips curl up like wisps of smoke and his eyes glimmer as if he knows some grand, hilarious secret that could undo the world order as they know it.

Granted, that expression might have more punch if Shiro hadn’t seen it before. He knows how much people can resemble their pets, but this is ridiculous. Right now, Lotor looks exactly like Kova always does, immediately after leaving a hairball in Shiro’s shoes.

As calmly as he can manage when he feels like he’s trying to hold back a volcanic eruption with a lace doily, Shiro rips a page out of his notebook. It’s a miracle that he only tears along the perforated edge. Then, looking Lotor dead in the eye, Shiro balls the loose sheet up and chucks it at his best friend’s face.

Lotor flinches when it hits him, but as it rolls down into his lap, he fixes Shiro with a very particular expression. Between the slight wrinkle of his nose, the tight not-quite-curl of his frown, and the pointed arch of a single, immaculately manicured eyebrow, Lotor radiates the sentiment, _“I’m not going to tell you that you’re being an idiot—but I don’t _**_need_**_ to tell you, because you _**_know_**_ that you’re being an idiot.”_

Pouting, Shiro rustles the stack of undergrad papers before him. He’s done marking up Lance’s last assignment, so before getting to the one he _really_ wants to read, Shiro needs to make sure he didn’t miss anyone else. Not that he expects Lotor to believe him at the moment, but regardless, as he puts his glasses back on, Shiro insists, “I only know how Keith feels about that movie because he wrote about it for one of his reading response journals.”

Lotor frowns bemusedly and tilts his head. “You and your grandmother are teaching queer history, darling.”

“Yeah, but one of the things we started off on was Eve Sedgwick.” When Lotor only looks more perplexed by this, Shiro gives him a shrug. “Obaasan agreed with my suggestion that the introduction to _The Epistemology of the Closet_ could help address some of the student comments she got last time she taught this course. You know, the ones like, ‘Why are we studying these poems that don’t seem gay,’ ‘Why are we reading these people’s letters when they aren’t explicitly romantic,’ all of that garbage. It’s not that complicated.”

Although Lotor seems to consider this, he ultimately shakes his head. “Only you and Obaasan could act like the rationale behind handing Sedgwick to undergraduates—most of whom are only enrolled in her course to fulfill certain bureaucratic requirements vis a vis the paths to their diploma—ought to be perfectly self-evident. By the way? I still fail to see how _The Notebook_ fits into anything.”

“Oh my God, it was actually _brilliant_, how Keith connected those dots?” Lotor pulls the same face that he usually makes when Zethrid starts another half-hour tirade about how much she loves her girlfriend—but Shiro can’t allow himself to get distracted. “Well, you know what Sedgwick’s axioms in the introduction are all about, right? Outlining different seemingly commonsense truths like, ‘People are different from each other’ and, ‘Trying to figure out someone else’s identity for them is a minefield,’ but dressed up in some fancier language because it was the late eighties, when she wrote that book, and she had to help establish queer studies as a _‘legitimate’_ field?”

For no particular reason—at least, none that Shiro can discern with any certainty—Lotor purses his lips like he’s trying not to be sick. Everything about him wilts, looking distinctly Bothered. Maybe it’s something about Shiro quirking his fingers in makeshift quotation marks. Either way, though, Shiro needs to share the rest of this.

“So, pretty much everyone barely got their minimum two pages and wrote about how they didn’t feel like they understood the reading—”

“This surprises me about as much as you forgetting your own name in the face of a cute boy—”

“Keith went way over two pages, though. He could _easily_ get an actual paper out of that journal, too. Sure, he started out at a place of, ‘I feel like I don’t really get this’? But he talked it all out at himself, picking apart Sedgwick’s axioms, and her evidence and arguments about them, trying to build them up in his own terms and figuring out how they fit together.” Shiro’s forelock sags over his face, but he pushes it back. “When Keith got to Sedgwick’s _third_ axiom—the one about how queer and feminist activisms can overlap but are not inherently the same thing? I put so many stars and positive comments all over this response of his, okay. Because he used _The Notebook_ as a way to get at Sedgwick’s point about how even people who have seemingly aligned interests can ultimately have conflicting goals, needs, and desires—”

“And that argument made _sense_?” Lotor pulls a face like he’s caught a whiff of rotten garbage. “Actual, _logical_ sense, I mean?”

In all likelihood, Lotor doesn’t intend to sneer so much. That just happens, sometimes, when he feels like he’s surrounded by truly painful levels of stupidity. Or when he feels particularly annoyed with whatever alleged nonsense Shiro’s gotten himself onto this time. Or when he’s tired.

…He’s probably tired; it’s been a long day.

Nodding doesn’t seem to put Lotor’s mind at ease, but Shiro still explains, “So, in Keith’s argument, Noah and Allie nominally have the same goal; namely, being together. But they also have very different needs, different backgrounds, and therefore different approaches to their relationship. Noah, having grown up poor, sees things more in terms of classism. On the other hand, Allie, being a young lady from a well-off family, is ultimately more influenced by how society does or doesn’t allow her any relative freedom or privilege based on things like her marriage prospects, her prospective husbands’ financial statuses, her performance of acceptable kinds of femininity—”

“You _cannot_ be serious, darling.” When Shiro only blinks at him bemusedly, Lotor sighs. “Unless your new paramour was reared on Judith Butler and bell hooks, and cut his teeth on Halberstam, Audre Lorde, and Julia Kristeva? Then I sincerely _doubt_ that he wrote his argument in those terms, exactly.”

“Keith is _not_ my paramour. Until the end of the semester—unless he signs up for another of Obaasan’s classes, I guess; that could complicate things—but until the twentieth of December, Keith is my _student_. Which is entirely _why_ he isn’t my paramour. Which you would _know_ if you’d listened to me—”

“Yes or no: did he write his argument in those terms? Or have you embellished things more than slightly?”

“…I _might_ have embellished somewhat—” Shiro groans at Lotor’s gloating smirk. “God, stop doing that thing with your face. You look like Kova went on the carpet instead of the litter box and successfully blamed Kuromi for it.”

“I only look like my cat getting the better of your cat because I’m _right_—”

“Listen, the _pieces_ of Keith’s argument were all solid. Anyone needs some polish and editing after a first draft, and he needed considerably less than the average undergrad.” Which should be more than enough, especially when saying anything else could let Lotor consider that he might be right—and yet, Shiro has to add, “Actually, I was really impressed by him quoting _Das Kapital_ while he unpacked how class and capitalism influence Noah’s experiences of masculinity—”

“_Any_ enterprising soul can Google Karl Marx, then crib citations from Wikipedia—”

“Some of the passages Keith quoted, I’d never even _read_ before, Lotor. Most of the Brecht he cited, I knew from Aunt Satomi’s book on politics in twentieth-century theatre and Adam trying to make Brecht and Tennessee Williams relevant to each other in his dissertation, but…” Shiro shakes his head, then grinds his thumb against the bridge of his nose. “Anyway, someone clearly taught Keith the value of a good footnote, too? Because he went off on one that took up most of its page _and_ spilled onto a second, citing Foucault, Bakhtin, Fredric Jameson, Theodor Adorno, Trotsky’s _Literature and Revolution_, and some essay that did a fusion Marxist, historical materialist, and psychoanalytic critique of _Dracula_? I had to look that one up after, because he made it sound _wild_—”

“Honestly, with the way you’re carrying on? You should cut the foreplay, go buy a Ring-Pop from CVS, then get down on one knee and promise to buy him a proper ring once you’ve found—”

“He’s my _student_, Lotor—”

“Technically, darling? He’s your _grandmother’s_ student. Anything you did would happen between _two. students_—”

“I grade a lot of his papers, though. She decides his final grade, but I deal with him in a more hands-on capacity than she does. And I’m not—”

“The only other boys you’ve gotten this excited about recently, you’ve _hated_. Forgive me for encouraging you, one of my two best friends, to pursue something that might actually make _you_, a person about whom I care quite deeply, _happy_.” Slouching back in his seat, Lotor crosses his legs at the knee. With a borderline-dismissive wave of his hand, he flips his long, bright cowlick off his face and says, “Anyway, do go on. You were telling me how brilliant, creative, and engaging you find Keith, a boy in whom you have absolutely no romantic interest whatsoever.”

_Yeah, _Shiro wants to say,_ because if I did have that interest, then I’d be taking advantage of him, and I don’t want to do that to him._

Instead, he rolls his eyes and tries to pick up where he left off. “Yeah, as I was saying? After Keith picked apart Noah and Allie’s conflicting interests and perspectives, he made a really good case for how Nicholas Sparks himself presents a similar case of some shared interests not necessarily meaning solidarity. Because yeah, he and audiences both want his novels—and the film adaptations, in some cases—to be engaging, but Nicholas Sparks’s work ultimately does a disservice to his readers by presenting things like Noah threatening suicide as _romantic_ and as signs of devotion, rather than as abuse.”

Lotor mulls that over for a moment, then gives Shiro a pensive hum. “Darling, just so you know? If you and Keith don’t provide full, annotated bibliographies for your eventual self-penned wedding vows, I am going to feel cheated and significantly put out.”

“_Whatever_,” Shiro sighs. Fortunately, he left Keith’s latest response journal for the end, and now, he has something fun to handle.

Unfortunately, however, as Shiro looks down at his row of pens, something twinges in his skull. The pain shocks out to his temples and he winces. Thinking it might be his neck—he might have tweaked a nerve in the exact wrong way? or maybe he jerked a muscle too hard and messed himself up?—Shiro stretches, lolls his head around and tries to find a position for his head that doesn’t hurt.

Nothing helps. As he blinks down at the moderately dark gray pen that Obaasan labeled with a sticker—_“Red, use for marking papers”_—Shiro’s head throbs harder. He shuts his eyes and shakes his head, ever so slightly. If he didn’t screw up his neck somehow, then maybe this little gesture will jostle _something_ loose inside his skull. Maybe kneading his forehead, then his temples, will push his internal wires back into place. Maybe he’ll fix whatever’s happening without resorting to anything crazy.

Except, when Shiro opens his eyes again, the pen in his hand looks… _vibrant_.

He _assumes_ this is what a vibrant color should look like, anyway. Teeming with life and energy and passion, a ballpoint city unto itself. So bright, it nearly sears his eyes. So warm, he would swear he feels fire blazing down his spine and through his muscles, screaming at him that sitting still is as good as death. So striking, to look at the pen feels like he’s been smacked and inexplicably, his mouth overflows with a taste like cherries. This couldn’t mean what it feels like…

Shiro _must_ be hallucinating… He’s read enough personal accounts, scholarly criticism, and trashy bodice rippers to know that he cannot be seeing colors.

Fortunately, the universe decides to agree with him; a few good blinks and the world fades back into the grays he knows so well. This still does nothing for his headache, but aspirin should do fine. Shiro’s taken to carrying it in his bag, so he knows he has some.

“Perhaps you ought to see someone about that,” Lotor says primly, scrunching up his nose as Shiro gets his pills. “Chronic headaches are nothing to joke about, darling. You could call a world of hurt down upon yourself by ignoring them.”

“I probably need to update my glasses.” In fact, Shiro takes a moment to jot down a note in his journal, reminding himself to get an appointment scheduled as soon as possible. He can’t right now, since the office closes at four on Fridays, but he’ll get around to it. “If anything comes back to suggest outer space brain parasites or corrupt magic, though? You have my full permission and knowing consent to say that you told me so.”

“Oh, I’ll do that even if the problem is your glasses. I will also reserve this right in the event of any romance _blossoming_ between you and a certain Mr. Kogane.” Holding out one of his long, spidery fingers, Lotor taps the flower that Shiro doodled in the margins of Keith’s assignment. “What happened to your usual star-markers, darling?”

Cheeks flushing hot, Shiro tugs the papers away. “Keith makes me feel like drawing flowers. It’s _nothing_—at least, nothing worth writing home about.”

The changes in Shiro’s margin-doodles—not to mention the feelings that inspired it—they _must_ be nothing. Even without the rules mandating it, surely Keith has better prospects than his professor’s grandson. Letting himself hope for something more, Shiro’s certain, would only lead to everything going wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

On the fourth Tuesday of Dr. Shirogane’s class, Keith gets his first paper that someone marked up with flowers in the margins. Even as she pulls up this morning’s PowerPoint and starts her lecture, Keith leafs through the pages of his double-spaced, twelve-point Times New Roman word-vomit, pausing on every flower that he finds. They all have the same general design—pale, fluffy halos of petals cocooning around each other and radiating out from the dark buttons in the blossoms’ centers—but that doesn’t tell Keith much about what they mean or who put them there.

In fairness, the chicken-scratch scribbled all over Keith’s margins suggests that Shiro read this one, not his grandmother. Precedent also says that Shiro drew the flowers, even though he always puts stars next to passages he likes, circles around things that need editing, and various wingdings beside things he wants to comment on more thoroughly. So far, only one of the papers that he’s returned to Keith has come back _without_ a few extra sheets of college-ruled notebook paper stapled on, filled with Shiro’s effusive responses to Keith’s thoughts about the reading. Lance usually only gets one extra page, if he gets anything, and he never smiles about it.

Six sheets of notebook paper hang off this assignment, and each of them, save the last, has writing on both sides. Almost definitely Shiro’s handiwork then—but Shiro draws _stars_ on people’s assignments, not _flowers_. Why would he change the way he does things _now_, after establishing a method that works and a pattern that everybody recognizes? It doesn’t make sense.

Maybe someone else could make puzzle out Keith’s situation for him, but half-an-hour into class, Keith’s head starts throbbing.

As he traces his eyes over the lines of Shiro’s flowers, Keith winces. He has to stifle a groan, lest it interrupt Dr. Shirogane’s lecture and throw off the entire class’s flow. He should’ve gotten more sleep last night. Or maybe he needed a better breakfast. Or maybe Keith’s getting sick because fuck his life, right—except the pain flares up hotter as he tries to focus on the flowers. It’s a dull thump when he looks at his notes or at the pull-down screen with Dr. Shirogane’s projected PowerPoint slides. But when Keith squints at the blossoms that Shiro drew all over his work, it feels like someone’s kicking his skull and stomping on his brain with soccer cleats.

Worse, the flowers swim before his eyes, their lines flickering dark gray, then something bright like a blaze of fire, then back to gray.

Fuck, shit, dammit, _this_ garbage again. 

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Keith turns his assignment over and takes a long swig of his coffee. He doesn’t have any aspirin with him and he can’t leave to get food, not when that would no doubt mean missing out on something important. So, he needs another way to help himself set things as close to right as possible. That means putting aside the flowers before he can even figure out what they _are_, much less what they _mean_.

Aside from anything involving soulmates, because that’s ridiculous.

Lucky for Keith, several people in his life already have their soulmates. Whether it’s Dad mooning over Mom in public like nobody else can see them, Allura and Romelle kicking each other under the table during group study sessions at the library, Antok only reining Kolivan back in after he’s already gone over the top because Antok loves listening to his husband rant, or Matt and Hunk being so besotted that Keith wishes that he’d vomit so he could get the nausea over with already, soulmates run amok in his life. On one hand, thanks to this abundance of soulmates, Keith _knows_ that he can’t have found his soulmate in Shiro; observation tells him so.

On the other hand, this gives him plenty of brains to pick about what’s going on. Over lunch down in Mitchell, campus’s main dining hall, Allura tells him that Shiro drew the flowers in the same red color that he always uses to mark up assignments. Considering this, there’s no reason to ascribe any particular significance to Shiro’s doodles. They could mean any number of potential things, but they could just as likely mean nothing. 

“Perhaps he simply got bored with drawing stars,” she suggests, shrugging as she hands back his papers. Although Allura sounds like she doesn’t mean a single word she’s saying, Keith can’t imagine why she’d break out her Coy Voice like she’s doing now. “Or perhaps he’s trying to tell you something by making this change in his style.”

Romelle nods sagely, playfully nudging her shoulder into Keith’s. “Flowers are prettier than stars anyway—_especially_ with the way he draws them,” she says as though no one could possibly disagree. “Maybe Shiro just decided that you deserve better than all the messy, lopsided things he gives everyone else.”

“I don’t,” Keith points out, “but if that’s what makes you happy to believe—”

“Keith Kogane, you stop that. I know where you sleep and Hunk will always let me in—”

“I’m not _saying_ that I don’t deserve nice things, Rom—”

“She has plenty of reason for thinking that you may not have the best of intentions in saying—”

“I think you’re being an idiot,” Romelle says with a huff and shakes her head. “Shiro being your TA is a temporary situation. As soon as the semester’s over, you’re free to do anything you want with him, provided that he consents—and, for the record? It’s his loss, if he doesn’t.”

“Which strikes me as unlikely.” Pointedly arching her eyebrows, Allura glances at the seat to Keith’s right, which holds Keith’s backpack. If Hunk or Matt or someone came to join them, he’d move his bag to the floor so they could sit. As it stands, no one else _needs_ the chair, so Keith can put his bag here. Strange for Allura to make any kind of case about this—but before Keith can ask her anything, Allura sighs. “Honestly, you shouldn’t be so fatalistic. Shiro’s already switched his usual way of marking up papers for you. You’ve said that he calls on you more often than—”

“What you’re saying?” Keith shakes his head. “It all sounds like an ethics committee hearing waiting to happen.”

Although he doesn’t roll his eyes as he takes a swig from his water bottle, it’s a close call. The impulse makes the back of his neck itch and makes his nerves shudder with a need to do _something_. Punching a brick wall would do better for him than sitting here, doing nothing while the nervous energy eats him alive from the inside out.

“Shiro can’t show favoritism to _any_ of his and Dr. Shirogane’s students,” Keith points out. “Not even in little ways like what you’re saying. Doing that would torpedo his academic career before it’s even really started. People could complain, or take it personally, or they could—”

“_Boring_,” Romelle sighs and pushes herself back from the table as Keith flips through his sketchbook, looking for a blank page. While he rifles through his backpack for his plastic box of drawing implements, Romelle stretches out. Unlike Keith, she doesn’t care about how this pulls her bright pink shirt up her torso, even though she exposes a soft, pudgy stomach, not abs like Keith has. Then again, Allura’s cheeks flush dark and her eyes go wide as she stares like she’s never seen Romelle look as beautiful as she does now with a messy bun and jeans that hug her hips and thighs a bit too tightly.

“I’m in the mood to hit the sundae bar,” Romelle announces, tugging the hem of her shirt but putting in almost no effort. Fittingly, she doesn’t get her top down all the way; when she stops holding it in place, it rides up again. “Do either of you want anything?”

Keith doesn’t feel like sweets right now. Even if he did, he’d turn Romelle down. He has work to do.

Strictly speaking, he should focus on his next reading response for Dr. Shirogane’s class. After all, his GPA depends on him doing well on these assignments. True, they won’t make or break him as much as his midterm essay and final paper might, but it’s like Keith’s gym routine: every little bit adds up. Letting himself get complacent only leads to bigger, more problematic messes that he won’t have an easy time of fixing.

Yet, instead of taking notes on the responses for the next meeting of LGBTQS 227, Keith fills a blank sketchbook page with myriad doodles of flowers. At first, he doesn’t bother trying to mimic any real flowers; he warms up by creating different patterns of petals around button-centers. Some of them, he draws long and thin with several petals crowned in. Others, Keith fashions with bigger petals shaped like hearts. While Romelle enjoys her sundae, loaded down with multiple toppings and scoops of ice cream, Keith draws leaves, stems, and blossoms.

By the time he and Romelle head out for their afternoon classes, Keith’s moved on to proper flowers, even pulled up references on his phone so he gets them right.

For all he intends to pay more attention during discussion group, looking at Shiro for too long threatens to rekindle Keith’s headache. Like staring at an incarnate star, Keith can’t focus too much on Shiro without feeling hot, and intimidated, and slightly sick. That pain makes about as much sense as the flowers on Keith’s assignment—but with this idea, based on however Shiro decides to react, Keith might get a few steps closer to figuring out what he’s dealing with.

Provided Shiro doesn’t unwittingly kill him first. As he writes on the whiteboard, his shirt stretches on his broad shoulders. As he faces the class and drops into a more neutral posture, the fabric remains wetsuit-snug on his pecs and abs, wrinkling up and straining around the buttons because Shiro probably needs to size up. As he leans against the edge of the desk, just folding his arms and nodding through Lance’s question about what a drag queen named Vaginal Creme Davis has to do the samurai they read about this weekend, Shiro looks too beautiful to be allowed.

Turning his gaze back to his sketchbook, Keith winces. Shit, he let himself look too long again. Fuck, though—fumbling through his backpack’s front pocket, groping around for his aspirin, Keith can’t shake the thought that these stolen glimpses of Shiro make everything, all the flareups of temporary pain, worthwhile.

Unless Keith’s dying of brain cancer or some acute infection that feeds on his gray matter, he guesses.

But in that highly unlikely situation, Keith would _want_ the last thing he sees in this life to be Shiro—his biceps, his ass, his smile like he genuinely has no idea how beautiful he is, his impossibly kind eyes… All of him. That’s part of why he sticks around after Shiro dismisses everyone. He’ll take a free chance to continue ogling Shiro, even though his aspirin’s barely taken the edge off anything today.

Besides, headache or no headache, Keith needs to see his other intentions through to the end. Otherwise, he may never get any answers about what’s going on.

While everyone else shuffles out of the classroom, he lingers by his seat. He makes like he’s rifling through his notebook, then slips today’s final sketch onto the desk. God, he hopes that the different shades he used look alright to people who’ve already found their soulmates. The companies who make Keith’s favorite colored pencils all help him somewhat, with the name labels that they put on their products and the pamphlets they include about which colors look good together. Keith followed his heart, though, picking the pencils he likes best after pulling them from his mixed up pouch at random. Who knows if he’s made something nice out of Prismacolor’s _Mulberry_ and _Black Cherry_, Derwent’s _Field Green_, Derwent’s _Primrose Yellow_, Holbein’s _Dandelion_, and Crayola’s _Outer Space_.

Ghosting his fingertips down the heavy paper, Keith sighs. It’s gonna set his headache off like a fucking road-flare, but he looks toward the head of the room, to the desk where Shiro’s fussing with his bag. He doesn’t notice Keith, too busy humming an upbeat tune that Keith would swear he recognizes. For some reason, it makes him think of leather jackets and reflective Aviator sunglasses.

In silence, he gives himself a few moments. Watching Shiro, he tries to parse out what he wants to say for himself. He makes himself take deep, slow breaths. Prays that the air doesn’t snag in his mouth, that his throat doesn’t collapse in on itself like a white dwarf star, and that he doesn’t embarrass himself beyond repair—or worse, make Shiro hate him. It’s torture enough, knowing that guys like Shiro—guys with thighs thicker than a London fog, biceps the size of Keith’s calves (or possibly his thighs), and pecs that constantly threaten to pop the buttons off of his poor shirts—exist outside of trashy romance novels. Keith might die if he found the secret code to crack that perfect smile and unlock Shiro’s intense disapproval.

Plus, it’s already past the date where he could withdraw from the class and expect any kind of refund. He wouldn’t be able to get the hypothetical _W_ dropped from his transcript, either. Best to play this cool and avoid pissing Shiro off, if possible.

Several moments leave Keith wondering if he’s stared at Shiro for too long, but just as clueless about what he should say. Maybe he should go. Now, right now, before Shiro can notice him for real and decide that Keith’s a freak. But as Keith adjusts his backpack’s straps, Shiro looks up from his desk. As though everything’s just fine, he smiles.

“Keith, I…” He trails off, but before Keith can blink, Shiro says, “Did you need—I mean, not that you _need_—of course you don’t, you’re already—did you—I really don’t mean to say that you’re anything but…”

The breathless chuckle that escapes Shiro makes Keith want to scream, _How dare you be like this! Even your flaws only make you more adorable! How does that even work, Shiro? People as hot as you aren’t supposed to be this cute_—but he forces himself to stay quiet. Even as Shiro ducks his chin, scratching the back of his neck with _“aw, shucks”_ bashfulness, Keith _will_ keep his emotions to himself. He _will_ let Shiro get out everything he wants to say, instead of popping off at the mouth.

It takes him a hot second, but Shiro manages to spit out, “Were you waiting—_atashi wa_, I didn’t—oh my God, why can’t I—what I mean is: did you need to ask me something? Or can I help you with anything?”

_Yes_, Keith thinks, but doesn’t say. _You can tell me what you’re doing here in the real world, for a starter? Isn’t there some gay, non-creepy retelling of _**_Sleeping Beauty_**_ that needs you to charge in on a white steed and valiantly save the beautiful prince from the wicked fairy’s curse?_

……Jesus, Keith’s imagination needs to cool it and quit running away on him.

Then again, made up mental fairy tales are probably better than grabbing Shiro by the collar of his shirt and begging him to nail Keith to the wall, the floor, the nearest bookshelf, or whichever desk in this classroom seems the least unstable.

As socially unacceptable as it would be, saying any of these things to his TA, who is also his professor’s beloved grandson, Keith _could_ always make things worse. In his experience, he has a knack for that. Even when he intends to do better, he can always find some way to mess things up beyond anybody’s expectations.

Oddly enough, that thought provides something like comfort as he desperately gropes for what he wants to say. Words don’t come to him fast enough and while his mouth helplessly splutters out _“um”_s and, _“er”_s, Keith’s gaze drifts down Shiro’s body, over the sharp angles of that jawline, the strong curves of his neck, those gorgeous pecs, yearning to shake off their chains and break free from their button-up confines—but at least Keith doesn’t beg Shiro to bend him over a desk. Or to let Keith bend him over a desk instead, whichever arrangement Shiro likes better.

Pausing around Shiro’s hips makes sense—after all, Keith’s only human—and true, he almost chokes on absolutely nothing as he drinks in the sight… but at least he manages to keep his unsavory reactions to himself.

Not for lack of trying on reality’s part, though. Shiro’s jeans today are the sort of dark that soulmate-having people usually call black. With how often he wears similarly shaded things, that must be his favorite color—assuming he can see them. Sometimes, Shiro’s pants might as well have been painted on his body. He’s led previous discussion groups in jeans so tight, Keith prayed that Shiro didn’t drop anything because if he bent over wrong, then he might’ve split his seams. While far from baggy, this pair looks looser and far more comfortable than Shiro’s usual, with more room for him to move around and less immediate threat of him bursting out of anything.

His bulge still strains the fabric so much, Keith can tell which way Shiro tucks his dick.

He goes left. Vegas money says he isn’t circumcised, either. Fuck’s sakes, Shiro’s already six-foot-four, chiseled like one of Michelangelo’s marbles and built like the brickest of brick houses, plus he’s smart _and_ the sentient incarnation of raw cane sugar, besides. Where the fuck does he get off, having a huge cock on top of all that horrible, wonderful, unspeakable perfection?

Rather than let himself say anything he’s thinking, Keith nods and pushes his bangs off his forehead. “Well, not exactly? I didn’t need to _ask_, but I wanted to _say_…” _That you’re everything I’ve ever found attractive condensed into a single human being and I want to kiss you ‘til we both pass out_—no, wait, fuck Keith’s life, that’s probably eleven different kinds of weird. Tugging on his hair, he huffs. “Y’know, thank you? For taking that extra time you did today? Like, to break down how bi and pan people get overlooked in queer histories? And why there are so many narrative absences shaped like us, I…”

Sighing, Keith makes himself look Shiro in the eye. “I really appreciated that.”

Without missing a beat, a smile breaks out on Shiro’s face and he heaves a sigh of relief. “Oh, I’m so glad you did, you—”

For a moment, Shiro fumbles over his words again. This time,though, more than just Japanese slips out. In the jumbled mess that wobbles out of Shiro’s mouth like a drunk teetering home from last call at the bar, Keith thinks he picks out _selinnela _(Altean’s word for, “moonbeam”), _meishadinuo _(the same word, but in Galra), _pathicus_ (which sounds like Latin? Maybe? Who the fuck knows?), _te quiero_ (Spanish, and some not-insignificant part of Keith desperately hopes that Shiro means it about Taco Bell), and _majramano_.

The last, another Galra word, hits Keith’s chest with chills. He clutches his backpack’s strap so tightly, he can feel the fabric cutting into his fingers. Kolivan might be Not Mad, Just Disappointed in him for blanking on what that word means and for not keeping up on their ancestral mother tongue. Even without the exact translation, though, Keith knows where he’s heard the word before.

Kolivan and Antok call each other _majramano_ about as often as “babe,” “husband,” “my love,” “_migadye_” (the Galra term for romantic soulmates), and in Antok’s case, often but not exclusively when Kolivan’s particularly exasperating him, “fuckhead.”

As though he can just say things like this to someone like Keith, Shiro grins. Fuck him for being the brightest ray of sunshine that campus has seen all week, too. The more he looks at Keith like that, the more it feels like Shiro would even stay focused on him if a horde of sexy, naked men ran through the door right now and declared Shiro as their king, which requires a big, gay orgy for some reason that probably makes perfect sense to people acquainted with their big, gay, sexy, naked culture. As Shiro flips his forelock back off his face, though, Keith can’t shake the thought that even a completely nude Chris Evans couldn’t distract Shiro from looking at Keith.

God, Keith hopes he’s wrong. He hopes Shiro _would_ look at the sexy, naked men instead of ignoring them in favor of Keith. Whether or not Shiro means anything untoward, Keith doesn’t need that kind of pressure in his life.

“I really am glad, Keith?” They’ve gone quiet so long, those words almost make Keith jump out of his skin. Although Shiro’s expression briefly falters, before too long, he goes right back to giving Keith an impossibly, unspeakably gentle smile. “I hoped that you’d like taking the extra time for that. You wrote so passionately about bi erasure the other week, and it really is a problem in how we write queer histories, so I couldn’t _not_ address it. I didn’t want to let you down—or, y’know, let you think that Obaasan and I have you write all these responses for no reason—”

“I wouldn’t think that,” Keith blurts out before he can stop himself. “You’d never waste our time like that.”

Shiro’s cheeks darken. Something twinges behind Keith’s forehead. For a moment—one brief, glimmering flash of time—he would swear that Shiro’s face looks… _different_ from how it should. Neither better nor worse, but somehow, more vivid. More vibrant. More _alive_.

That realization worsens as Shiro crosses to Keith’s desk. Digging his backpack’s straps into his hands doesn’t help him either. Keith rubs his palm against the rough fabric casings but the coarse texture doesn’t ground him any better. One second, everything’s normal: shades of gray all stacked on top of each other, clearly delineated but as visually interesting as a bowl of room temperature oatmeal, and only Shiro’s advance toward Keith would attract anyone’s attention.

The next tick, though, something about Shiro inexplicably feels warmer. His skin seems to glow under the fluorescent lights above them, as if Shiro’s lit up by fireflies. Looking at his shirt, Keith would swear that he tastes grapes, all crisp and sweet and cool. This can’t be happening. Not right here, not right now, and absolutely not to Keith. If this is what he suspects and not a further sign that he’s sick, or broken, or going crazy, then it must be a dream because there’s no way this can be happening. That’s probably why Keith’s distorted view only affects Shiro.

“I’m glad,” Shiro says, barely loud enough for Keith to hear him. “I don’t _want_ to waste your time. I’d hate to make you feel disrespected like that.”

“Do you know _how_ to disrespect anybody?”

“Mmm, I’ve been known to do it. Sometimes.”

Keith snorts, then cringes. “Sorry. That sounded too derisive, didn’t it? I didn’t mean—not _really_—well, I didn’t mean any disrespect of my own? But you _do_ come off…” Trailing off, he shrugs. Why can’t words cooperate with him for once? “You never act like someone who’d get that rude with _anyone_.”

“Dr. Sendak from my undergrad would disagree with you.”

As he edges into Keith’s personal space, Shiro flickers back and forth between those two poles—gray and cadaver cold like the rest of their surroundings, then flushed warm and impossibly alive, then back again. It’s like watching a lightbulb that can’t decide if it wants to die or not, except that, no matter how bright he seems, Shiro doesn’t literally illuminate the room. (Not that he _couldn’t_, if he felt like doing so. Or anyway, it wouldn’t shock Keith that much, learning that Shiro spontaneously developed bioluminescent powers.)

“Then again,” Shiro chuckles, so close that Keith could cop a feel of that amazing chest, “Dr. Sendak hit on me constantly, despite the whole professor-student thing, and he didn’t take ‘No’ for an answer. If not for Lotor—my best friend, that is—constantly interrupting before Sendak went _too_ far, things could’ve gotten a lot worse—”

“Okay, so, he didn’t _deserve_ respect, then?” An affirmative response makes Keith huff. “Then that shouldn’t count, y’know? Disrespecting people like that… It’s a whole different sort of game than disrespecting anybody else, right?”

With a hum, Shiro supposes that Keith has a point. Something’s off about the way that he agrees, though; it sounds less like he really thinks Keith’s right and more like he can’t figure out how best to phrase a counter-argument. At least Shiro doesn’t flicker or change from the world’s usual grays. Reaching out for Keith, he stays the same raincloud shade as usual. Waiting for Keith to nod his permission, Shiro doesn’t get the smallest, teasing gleam of whatever Keith’s mind has been throwing at them. Encouraging, and Keith almost sighs in relief. He might not be losing his mind after all.

Then, Shiro’s fingers curl around his shoulder, caressing Keith as if Shiro’s handling a precious artifact, something irreplaceable. Keith chokes back on nothing, tries to keep himself from openly gasping while Shiro’s right here, too close for plausible deniability. Maybe Shiro notices that almost-reaction, or picks up on the hints of it—but maybe he doesn’t; impossible to tell, since he doesn’t let his own expression falter. He just looks at Keith like there’s anything worth seeing, much less paying actual attention to, and rubs Keith’s shoulder in a way that would comfort Keith under any other circumstances. There’s still hope, though. Hope for everything to be in Keith’s head, nothing real in the slightest.

Except, with one gentle squeeze to his bicep, a bonfire flares up in Keith’s view. If only that were literal and not one of the only words he has for what he’s seeing. Even though the rest of the room sticks to dreary monochrome, _Shiro_ breaks out in another blaze of light, and life, and dynamic energy, and… and… Wait, it can’t be… How could it…

If Keith didn’t know better, he would dare to call this _color_.

Granted, Keith couldn’t tell what color looked like if it slapped him with a rolled up issue of _Playguy_. For all the descriptions he’s ever read in online tutorials and his How to Art Good books, he doesn’t really understand what color looks like. Most of his art teachers, all the way back to kindergarten, have flat-out said that they can’t explain what color looks like and won’t even bother trying.

So, what does Keith know? He _could_ be looking at color right now. The warmth of Shiro’s skin… The faintly summery shadows around his cheeks… The smudges underneath his eyes, mostly blended in but ever-so-slightly brighter than the rest of his face, like he tried to bury something in the backyard but didn’t dig down deep enough… The pillowy look to his mouth and the barely-there sheen of lip-chap—all these things could jump out at Keith so clearly because he’s seeing color.

Except the universe wouldn’t let things play out like that—would it?

Making Keith bite down on shivers like he’s stuck under one of the wall-mounted A/C units in a campus computer lab… Prickling his arms with goosebumps as if Shiro’s touch contains the purest essence of winter… Filling the air between them with invisible fireworks that burn and crackle that might never end—Keith _understands_ the universe pulling stunts like this. In all likelihood, countless people feel this way about Shiro on a daily basis. Having a crush on him has got to be the most perfectly ordinary of all possible ordinary things.

There’s no sense in the idea of Keith actually seeing color, though. None whatsoever, because there _can’t_ be any sense in something so outlandish. Nothing about his current situation _actually_ suggests that he is anything but crazy, desperate, possibly sick, and more than likely sleep-deprived.

Color vision would imply reciprocation. Keith wouldn’t see the world in color without Shiro doing the same. Mismatched soulmates happen, yes, but Keith’s only heard of that in the context of polyamorous people who match each other but don’t share certain other partners. Metamours, he thinks, is the word Hunk, Lance, and Romelle used to describe the people who share a mutual soulmate without aligning themselves—but that wouldn’t look like what Keith’s seeing. Every testimonial he’s read mentioned that colors came in wan, washed out, and faded until the writers had found all of their soulmates.

Nothing about Shiro looks washed out. If anything, he shines too brilliantly to be allowed.

Whatever’s going on, Shiro smiles as if everything in the world is exactly as it should be. Like he can’t tell that something’s broken, because it must be, if Keith’s brain wants to trick him so badly—which _must_ be what’s happening. What else besides a trick can explain the fact that everything else changes color _except_ for Shiro’s eyes? Even when he squints, Keith can’t tell what he sees happening in Shiro’s eyes. Although they glimmer more brightly, they’ve barely changed at all, otherwise. They look the same shade. How can everything about Shiro shift so radically, yet his eyes remain the same?

Ducking his chin should help. Keith could use the break from staring at the unreachable star that Shiro calls his face. Too much longer could start to get uncomfortable and Shiro might decide that Keith’s a creep, which sounds like one of the most horrible outcomes Keith can imagine. He’d hate to make Shiro feel objectified or like Keith’s only interest in him comes from his physical beauty. Shiro would have reason for thinking so, right now. If he asked, Keith couldn’t repeat a goddamn thing that Shiro’s said since first squeezing his shoulders.

Fuck, for all he _hears_ Shiro—for all he _thinks_ he hears Shiro insisting that Keith’s so bright, and so talented, and so passionate, which Shiro inexplicably finds endearing—Keith can barely process anything that Shiro’s telling him. Shiro could confess to being a gay, Japanese-American Ted Bundy and Keith wouldn’t be able to testify against him. In the face of Shiro’s painfully earnest expression and whatever’s currently messing with Keith’s eyes, he can’t tell one word from any others. So, it’s not only fair for him to take a break on eye-contact; it’s the least that he owes Shiro, as far as basic courtesy’s concerned.

Keith doesn’t notice the flaw in his plan until his eyes land on Shiro’s chest. That stupid, sculpted chest that Keith so fucking badly yearns to touch.

Worse, he spots a sliver in the fabric that breaks up the grape-flavored shade that’s replaced the previous dark gray. There—right there—the cloth between two buttons bows out, wrinkling because Shiro has too much chest for his poor shirt to contain. Keith can’t help but recognize this phenomenon: in freshman year, he spent the majority of winter break in tees, sweatshirts, and pullover sweaters because his own shirts creased up around him in the exact same way. Of course, before he fixed his diet and made time to hit the gym, Keith strained his shirts with a soft, pudgy little belly.

Shiro’s pecs, on the other hand, have got to be hardwon muscle. Still, they stress out his shirt enough that Keith sees an unmistakable slip of cleavage. Before Shiro warmed up like this, distance helped hide the lighter gray shade of Shiro’s skin, keeping it mostly obscured in the dark expanse of his top. But looking at him now, drinking in the sight and the new maybe-it’s-really-color on his skin, makes Keith’s mouth tingle like he tried to eat a cinnamon stick.

Keith can’t help gasping when he notices: Shiro’s chest isn’t that much darker than his face. Which probably means that Shiro’s chest has seen its fair share of sunlight. Which would likely mean that he’s been outside shirtless, pecs and abs getting everywhere, biceps and shoulders on display, and—_God, STOP it._

Fuck his life, Keith super doesn’t need to think about that right now. He doesn’t need to think about Shiro wandering around some sunny beach in only low-slung swim trunks. Or about Shiro at the gym, wiping his face on his tank-top with no regard whatsoever for how many people die of massive nasal hemorrhages at the sight of his abs. Or about Shiro naked, sprawled out in a good-sized bed, beads of sweat glistening on his face and neck as he laces one of those big hands up in Keith’s hair, as he moans under Keith’s touch, as Keith puts all the effort he can muster into—

“_Fuck_,” Keith hisses, wincing hard. The pain behind his eyes rears its ugly head again—and it brings a friend. As soon as he grabs his forehead, it’s like a construction crew starts taking jackhammers to the back of his skull, down toward his neck. Dimly, he thinks that Lance would take this free chance to make a shitty joke whose punchline boiled down to, _“Ha ha, Keith said, ‘Fuck.’ That’s, like, a SEX word.”_

Shiro, on the other hand, makes a throaty, sympathetic sound. “Keith…? Are you feeling okay?”

_I’m fine, I’m fine_, Keith wants to insist. _It’s just that I’m allergic to gorgeous pecs and people having any faith in me._

Instead, he shakes his head.

Shiro’s hand caresses his bicep again. “What’s wrong?”

“I, uh… Headache, it’s…” _Fuck, shit, dammit_—Keith needs a lie. Like, now. Shit, shit, shit, what can he say for himself, what excuses can he make, what causes headaches—“I didn’t skip lunch, I promise! I just, y’know, like…”

Traitor to the last—or maybe it thinks it’s helping—Keith’s stomach growls. Face flushing hot, he hunches his shoulders. Thank god he didn’t tie his hair back today; bowing his head lets Keith hide in it. Didn’t he have enough for lunch? He thought he did… If he _hadn’t_, Allura and Romelle would’ve objected…

Without a word, Shiro withdraws his hand. As he dashes back to his desk, Keith feels like he can’t move. A chill punches him in the gut. Fuck, did he scare Shiro off? Did he find the one way to make Shiro hate him after all? Just the thought of that makes emptiness claw at Keith’s insides, nag at him about how badly he must’ve screwed up and how this sort of shit is why he’ll never find his soulmate and then—

And then there’s a Nature Valley granola bar, mere inches from his face. The wrapper doesn’t look normal—like Shiro’s skin, it looks warmer, and Keith would swear he smells a freshly mown lawn—but apart from that, there’s nothing special to be seen.

Except on Shiro’s face, where his eyes glisten like one wrong answer could make him cry,

“Please take it?” He proffers the granola bar. “It’s not much, but it’s better than letting yourself go hungry like that.”

If Keith felt petty and somewhat less headachey, he would snap, _“That’s easy for you to say, with your GQ cover-boy abs.” _He’d be an asshole for saying that, not to mention acting like he knows the first thing about Shiro’s life outside the classroom and his relationship with his grandmother—but Keith would probably bite back like that, under most other circumstances.

Rather than indulge that impulse, Keith nods. The granola bar’s wrapper crinkles as he curls his fingers around it. “Thanks, Shiro. I… Good thing my other class got canceled. Eating these things during lecture always feels like… like, it’s way too loud for class, y’know?”

“Yeah, I’ve been that disruption more than a few times.” Chuckling grimly, Shiro reaches for Keith again. As he brushes some of Keith’s hair aside, tucking it behind Keith’s ear, Shiro seems to pass on a static shock—except for how it doesn’t hurt. The charge behind Shiro’s touch is nice, actually. “I… I have to go upstairs for office hours, but…”

Shiro’s sigh almost sounds like he’s saying, _But I don’t want to leave; I’d rather stay with you._

Dropping his hand back to Keith’s shoulder, he says, “Take care of yourself, okay, Keith? And if you ever need anything? _Please_ don’t hesitate to ask. You know where to find me, and I promise not to judge, I…” He gives Keith one more squeeze. “I _want_ to help you, however I can.”

How Keith gets through agreeing, he has no idea. How he heads for the door poses an even bigger mystery. Keith’s legs feel like glorified jello molds. His heart races like the engines in a Formula 1 grand prix. Part of him wants to go sit somewhere he can eat his granola bar without bothering anyone too badly, but an equally significant part of him warns that he’ll get sick all over everything if he tries eating anything.

_Fuck_, Shiro had damned well better find that sketchbook sheet back on Keith’s desk. If he doesn’t, then Keith’s just gone through Hell for absolutely nothing.

At least, once he settles in a solitary corner of the library, his vision soon fades back to gray. Given all the homework he needs to finish before he can draw Shiro another flower, Keith can’t spare the time to hunt down a specialist who might could explain flashes of color cropping up without a soulmate being present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: a quick explanatory note, and some credit where it’s due. _“Majramano”_ is the creation of my dear friend, NoirSongbird, and it originates in her Lancelot fic, **“[hold me tight or don’t](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15016646/chapters/34810379).”** As for what it means, in her and Lotor’s words: “‘My sword-arm’ is the correct translation. What it means… is a bit more like _‘someone I trust with my life.’_ Someone I cannot imagine being without. Someone whose loss would greatly diminish me. Someone as important to me, and as trusted, as a good blade.”
> 
> Also, Keith was correct about “pathicus” being Latin. There was some socio-cultural baggage attached to it in Ancient Rome and it got more complicated/nuanced than contemporary, Western top/bottom debates because of how Ancient Romans thought about sex, sex roles, etc.—but it’s basically Latin for, “bottom.”
> 
> Also also, Shiro uses the Japanese pronoun _“atashi”_ in here. That was not a misspelling of _“watashi”_ on my part, but was a deliberate choice to use a personal pronoun that is largely associated with teenage girls and younger women. Outside of situations where the more formal _“watashi”_ would be more appropriate, my headcanon Shiro’s “I/me” pronouns in Japanese are both _“atashi”_ and the more neutral _“boku”_; he uses them pretty much interchangeably.
> 
> He feels similarly about English third-person pronouns: as long as you’re being respectful, you can call him he, she, they, zie, or pretty much anything else and he’ll respond positively. TL;DR: Shiro is cis, he’s just open to most pronouns as long as they’re said respectfully.


	4. Chapter 4

“_Darling_,” Lotor groans, letting his long, bright ponytail droop over their sofa’s armrest. “You’re being abnormally quiet over there. Please tell me that you haven’t started staring at those drawings again.”

Propped on his elbows with his old black DSi in-hand, Shiro rolls his eyes. “Right. Of course. Because I should be the very picture of talkative while _strenuously_ arguing with Cynthia and her stupid Spiritomb?”

Granted, both of Keith’s sketchbook pages are propped up beside him, resting against Shiro’s laptop, stack of notebooks, pile of papers he needs to mark, and heap of things he needs to sort after cleaning them out of his backpack. He has yet to figure out which flowers Keith meant to draw for him, but Shiro can still appreciate the care that Keith put into every line, into every stroke of pen-or-pencil against the heavy paper. No, Shiro can’t say how the coloring and shading would look in their full glory, but even drinking in these mixed up grays, Shiro gets the sense that Keith put genuine effort into choosing the shades he used.

All of which is beside the point because Lotor can’t see those sheets. As far as he’s concerned, Shiro is only listening to his therapist about taking some nights off. Rather than grading papers, reading for class, or poking at his dissertation proposal, Shiro’s playing one of the only video games that he understands. Nothing to see here—and definitely nothing that Shiro deserves interrogation over.

By way of illustrating what he means, Shiro turns up the volume on his DS. True, _Pokémon Platinum_’s Champion battle music has never grown on him like tracks from other games in the franchise, but Shiro needs to crystal-clarify: Lotor’s accusations of mooning, swooning, and generally acting like a besotted teenage idiot are absolutely, categorically baseless. Literally, his only reason for thinking that Shiro’s any kind of lovesick—much less thinking that he has spent the entire day sneaking glimpses of the drawing he found attached to Keith’s reading response this morning—is that Lotor _wants_ Shiro and Keith to start dating on the sly. That sounds like exactly his favorite sort of drama.

Right as Shiro finally KOs that infuriating, stupid ghost, something gently thwaps him on the temple. He whines, but this doesn’t stop Lotor from crowding in behind him. Likewise, Shiro’s attempts to ignore whatever Lotor thinks he’s playing at right now do nothing to stop him from drumming those long, spidery fingers on Shiro’s shoulders. Most people, Shiro thinks, might object to a self-issued invitation like the one that’s brought Lotor into his personal space as if he belongs here—which sounds fine for said people, but Shiro and Lotor don’t need those kinds of boundaries.

On the undeniably positive side, Lotor swanning over here means Shiro can turn the volume back down.

“Your beau really does have a magnificent command of color,” Lotor says as easily as ever, with the same detached, intellectually snooty, prissy little kitten air that he’d use to comment on a collection of Caravaggios or an exhibition of Mapplethorpe’s most sexually explicit photographs. “Either someone’s helping him, or you’ve been right about your irrational desire to disprove my thesis.”

“Ugh,” Shiro huffs, forcing himself not to look up from his game. “You don’t _have_ a thesis. All that you’ve shared with the class is your repeated insistence that soulmates turn up in the unlikeliest of all possible places sometimes, so why _couldn’t_ Keith be mine.”

“And why couldn’t he, darling. Yes, exactly, _that_ is my thesis.”

“You do know that words have generally agreed upon meanings for a reason, right?”

This earns Shiro a (mostly playful) swat to the back of the head. It doesn’t hurt and Lotor likely intends for it to annoy Shiro more than injure him because Lotor thinks that his point is a very dreadfully relevant one, absolutely crucial to Shiro’s continued survival as a human being on planet Earth.

Nevertheless, Shiro insists, “Lotor, please, it’s very important to me for you to understand that words have meanings for a reason.”

“Words have generally agreed upon meanings for several reasons,” Lotor says, “most of them bourgeois, counterrevolutionary, typically made in bad faith, and in all things, utterly tedious. Also, they are tacky and I hate them.”

Grumbling indecipherably, Lotor huffs over to the sink. As he cleans out the teakettle, he continues, “Your refusal to consider my points on the basis of linguistic pedantry that doesn’t align with your usual character or what I know of you from two-and-a-half decades of observation and friendship? Only suggests, to me, that you _know_ I have valid points but wish to ignore them because they don’t conform to your own preconceived notions of how the world _should_ work, according to you and whichever toxic societal brainwashing has made you decide that you will die romantically unfulfilled.”

Statements like this would impress Shiro if not for three simple things.

First of all, Lotor is cribbing notes from Judith Butler. He’s playing fast and loose with what she wrote, and he hasn’t remotely tried to get her exact phrasing down, but Shiro knows where he’s seen arguments like this before. (Honestly, the fact that Shiro recognizes arguments loosely paraphrased from the introduction to the tenth-anniversary edition of _Gender Trouble_ suggests so many horrifying things about him that should nullify Lotor’s alleged “thesis” because _why_ would you wish someone like Shiro on someone like Keith—but that’s beside the point.) Moreover, Lotor’s cribbing notes from Butler when he’s normally critical of her and prefers to cite her as little as possible.

Second of all, he delivers this little speech with a languid drawl that gets halfway to sneering properly before getting bored and giving up. His tone right now almost makes him sound like the empty, disaffected trust fund brat that most people genuinely think he is as soon as they learn that yes, his father is Senator Zarkon Cizar—yes, Virginia, _that_ Senator Zarkon Cizar—and that yes, his mother received a great deal in the divorce because he had once upon a time been too enamored with Honerva de Verestía to sign a prenup. Whether or not Lotor intends to sound like he doesn’t care what he’s saying, that’s what he broadcasts, which undercuts the ostensible seriousness of his points.

Third and finally, by the time Shiro got home with their takeout, Lotor had swapped his crisp button-up and slacks for a pair of bright-looking Hello Kitty pajamas that barely cover his whole ass and an equally bright crop-top that bears the message, _“If a man has no skeletons in his closet, there’s probably a Bertha in his attic.”_

The last point wouldn’t preclude Lotor being taken seriously, but it’s incredibly difficult to find him intimidating when he’s acting like this and dressed like he’s doing laundry. It’s also difficult to focus on his face when he slouches against the counter and Shiro feels compelled to count all the little cartoon cat-mascots on his pajamas—but admittedly, Lotor can’t take all the blame for that distraction. He just has so many Hello Kittys on his shorts, dolled up like angels, splashed across his thighs and junk, and it really shouldn’t take _that_ long to count them, Shiro could get a good number and go back to talking before Lotor even notices that anything’s gone—

_Snap!_

Shiro flinches at the sound of snapping fingers. When he recovers, Lotor frowns and gives him three more snaps in quick succession.

“My eyes are up here, darling,” he deadpans.

Slouching back onto the table, Shiro pouts. “Well, since I guess we’re playing a game of, ‘Make a random statement that has nothing to do with the actual conversation,’ now? My Adderall is wearing off.”

“Really. Is that so. I couldn’t tell. Truly, you seem so attentive and focused.”

“Whatever, smart-ass.” With a quick shake of the head, Shiro turns back to his game. Thankfully, Pokémon battles don’t progress without player input, so it’s essentially been on pause until now, as he swaps out Steelix for Torterra against Cynthia’s Lucario.

Although Lotor gives him a few moments of peace, once he has his tea, he sighs like Shiro shouldn’t have let himself think he was getting out of this conversation easily. “Why _are_ you so resistant to the idea of being with Keith Kogane, darling? You yourself say that the only type you have is _men_. Unless I’ve misjudged his gender identity based on the pronouns that you consistently use for him, I do believe Keith qualifies…”

Inhaling deeply, Shiro taps his black plastic stylus on the DS’s touch-screen. He does not, however, acknowledge Lotor.

Lotor hums and scoots his chair across the linoleum. As he leans closer, he’s probably giving Shiro one of those pensive smirks he does, which always leave the impression that Lotor knows something everyone else doesn’t. “He wouldn’t be doing so well in Obaasan’s class if he weren’t intelligent. Considering how much you enjoy marking his reading responses, I believe it stands to reason that you and Keith could have several worthwhile, engaging conversations…”

Shiro could respond to that, but everything he can think of to say would probably only support Lotor’s alleged point. For example, mentioning how easily he and Keith can get wrapped up in their own conversations during discussion groups—Lotor would eat up that evidence, no question.

For now, though, Lotor sighs impatiently. “I’m not dismantling your ethical concerns again, darling. I have already offered you several point-by-point explanations of why you don’t need to worry yourself into an early grave over any of these arguments, yet you continue ignoring and dismissing me. A relationship between two students, even when one is a grad student and the other an undergraduate, does not carry the same implications or imbalance of power as a _professor_ attempting to date a student—especially not when _you_, of all people, are the graduate student in question, you hopeless romantic.”

For all ignoring Lotor makes guilt wriggle through Shiro’s chest, he insistently says nothing.

Besides, throwing a dirty look across the table _should _also get him off the hook for any accusations of _entirely _ignoring Lotor. Shiro’s done nothing wrong by zeroing in on his game, on this battle, on literally anything that doesn’t involve what Lotor’s on about because basic-level ethics demand that Shiro ignore any such desires. Normal people in teaching (assistant) positions do not give serious thought to the idea of dating their students, no matter how many technicalities their best friends offer as justifications for why, actually, asking Keith out would be completely fine.

Then again, unlike Shiro, normal people probably don’t sigh about KOing an NPC’s Pokémon because their thoughts wander away from them like a misbehaving child at the mall, and before too long, they end up informing Shiro that, _If Keith were a Pokémon, he’d be a Lucario. That, or maybe a Houndoom. Maybe a Flareon or Umbreon. Something cute but fierce like all those guys._

Insofar as Shiro’s aware, normal people _also_ don’t see their DS screens flicker over the mere thought of naming a Lucario, _“Keith.”_ If the battery icon on the touch-screen were empty or blinking, Shiro would suspect that he needs to plug in his handheld—but, no. In the past few weeks, he’s gotten accustomed to the world around him blinking in and out like this, almost always when Shiro’s around Keith or thinking about him. As Cynthia sends out her Togekiss, the pixelated images before him remain monochrome.

As he sends in his Luxray, though, Shiro winces and tries to adjust to everything flaring up brighter.

Usually, his world of grays returns soon enough, so Shiro presses through the battle. He can handle a few moments of doubt, even some minor twinging in his skull—but tonight, his vision only flickers one more time.

After that, everything stays put, apparently locked into this intensity. Watching electric attacks crackle and thunder at his opponent, Shiro feels his mouth erupt like he’s holding a whole bag of Pop-Rocks in his cheeks. When Cynthia switches in her Garchomp—immune to all but one of the moves that Shiro’s taught his Luxray—Shiro spends a good minute squinting at the sprite instead of changing out his Pokémon. He’s seen Garchomp too many times to count, but for the first time, the bipedal shark-dragon makes _sense_ to him. In particular, around its face, he makes out so many little details: an entire eye, a tongue, and fangs where he’s only seen brightish dots amidst a sea of darker pixels.

Looking at the screen before him, Shiro knows he isn’t seeing shades of gray. If he were, the world wouldn’t be this bright or feel so alive. He’d carry on, the same way that he always has before—but only color vision could explain these changes… Lotor isn’t his soulmate. For one thing, Adam fills that role in Lotor’s life, and for another, they’ve been friends since they were kids, which is, even by clickbait standards, getting on a pretty long time to go without realizing who they are to each other. Plus, Shiro’s eyes only start doing this to him when he’s with Keith, or when he’s thinking about Keith, which would suggest…

Shiro’s stomach turns so much at that thought, it almost makes him soft-reset the battle.

At least he doesn’t get physically sick. The sound of Lotor rustling around the table even steadies his nerves a little. Lotor being Up To Something doesn’t always go well, but there’s a refreshing, comfortable feel to it. By the time Shiro finishes his battle and sets his DS aside, he’s almost back to a place where he would call himself _calm_.

“Hmmm, how odd,” Lotor announces, right as Shiro stands up to stretch out his back. With Shiro’s laptop open in front of him, Lotor taps a finger against his lips in a way that makes Shiro’s heart sink.

“Either you’re thinking too hard,” he says, “or you’re about to make me regret not changing my password regularly.”

“Neither, one hopes—though you _should_ update your passwords more often.” Lotor arches both eyebrows with armor-piercing pointedness, then smirks at Shiro’s screen. “You should also be wary of leaving yourself logged in to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Amazon, the iTunes store, wherever else you’ve logged in to. Honestly, if you lost your laptop, anyone could break into it and spend thousands on useless junk.”

“Joke’s on you: I bought _Captain Marvel_, _Us_, and _Detective Pikachu_ months ago.” That won’t be what Lotor has in mind, but Shiro needs a drink before he can handle whatever nonsense stunt he’s getting dragged into. Leaning on the counter with an oversized glass of water, he says, “Also, if you bought me a present on Amazon, then… Thanks, I guess?”

“Unfortunately for you, that was a hypothetical suggestion, not a confession.” Lotor idly clicks at the mousepad a few times, then huffs. “I can make my point more efficiently if you move so that you can see the screen.”

For a moment, Shiro considers the possibility of letting this go and _not_ indulging Lotor.

But the more he looks at Lotor’s long legs, the more Lotor’s skin makes Shiro’s mouth taste like a pumpkin spice latte, which in turn makes Shiro hungry for an explanation. So, he shuffles around behind Lotor and glances down to the laptop.

The photo that Lotor’s pulled up features Keith flanked by two other guys. On the left, there’s a big guy whose sweatshirt makes Shiro catch a scent like honey. On the right, he sees a shorter, skinny guy with glasses and messy hair that reminds Shiro of what happened one summer break, when he and Lotor put some of Honerva’s expensive imported chocolate in the freezer, then forgot about it. Something about the shade of Glasses Boy’s hair just inexplicably looks like the brighter, dried out splotches that had showed up on the chocolate by the time Shiro and Lotor remembered to take it out.

None of which makes Keith less fascinating. This photo must be old; aside from how short his hair is cut, Keith doesn’t have the same knife’s edge look that Shiro’s accustomed to seeing. Although Keith hunches around himself like he’s trying to hide something, his shirt clings to an unmistakably pudgy-looking stomach. The shade of that fabric gives Shiro the sense that he’s stepped into a hothouse garden, assaulting his nose and mouth with the smell of flowers.

Dimly, Shiro thinks about Tuesday’s discussion group. He remembers Keith’s headache and how Keith rushed to promise that he’d eaten lunch, almost like he expected Shiro to suspect that he hadn’t. Assuming anything without Keith’s input wouldn’t be fair and too likely wouldn’t help him, if there _is_ a problem here and if Shiro isn’t simply seeing things or worse, projecting his own problems onto Keith.

Nothing to do about those questions now, so Shiro mentally files them away for later.

“Huh, that is strange,” Shiro says before Lotor can start asking questions. Even if Lotor jerks the conversation off the rails, Shiro wants to first send it down a track that won’t put him on edge for reasons only tangentially related to Keith, feelings about Keith, the relative ethics or lack thereof in dating Keith, and wondering what Keith’s lips would feel like on Shiro’s own. “Short hair looks weird on him. Not _bad_ weird, obviously—I mean, as the picture shows, Keith’s unfairly pretty either way, but… You’re right, _migadi_: that’s definitely strange.”

Despite Shiro buttering him up with that Galra endearment for best friends and non-romantic soulmates, Lotor knocks an elbow back against Shiro’s stomach. “Darling,” he needles, “this is where you’re meant to lecture me about how terribly rude and unethical I’m being by Facebook-stalking your less-than-secret crush for you.”

“Why bother when you already know what I’m going to say.” With a shrug, Shiro leans in and points at Keith’s shirt. “What color is he wearing?”

“Red. More of a _scarlet _shade, if you desire _complete_ accuracy, but…” The legs of Lotor’s chair drag on the linoleum, and he looks up at Shiro, threatening to smirk like the kitten who got the cream. “Can you _see_ the color of his shirt?”

“_No_,” bursts out of Shiro’s mouth. His cheeks flush hot; they practically catch fire when Lotor waggles his eyebrows. “…_Maybe_.”

Fuck Lotor’s toothy, shark-looking grin. Fuck that expression for screaming exactly how much he wants to start gloating and only holds off out of affection for one of his best friends. Fuck the fact that Shiro’s actually _grateful_ for Lotor’s self-restraint, especially since reaping the benefits of it feels too much like Shiro’s supporting Lotor’s old bad habit of pushing the rest of the world away, lashing out at anyone who got too close, and justifying those behaviors with the logic, _“I don’t treat you and Acxa like that because you two are special, but most people are actual garbage, so…”_

Fuck Shiro’s entire gay life sideways with a cactus-bladed chainsaw.

Snorting, Lotor prods, “So, Keith Kogane makes you see colors. You realize what this means, don’t you?”

“I don’t know?” Dragging both hands through his hair doesn’t help Shiro steady himself, but at least the texture feels nice. “The color vision comes and goes a lot, like without sticking around? Which makes me think that maybe I have a magical, angry tumor cropping up in my visual cortex and you should be nicer to me ‘cause you’re gonna miss me something _awful_ when I’m _dead_?”

“As much as I adore your morbid sense of humor, no.” Again, Lotor could gloat, and preen, and give Shiro an overdue _I told you so_. Instead, he lets his expression soften into a gentle smile, something most people never get to see from him. “Color vision often doesn’t immediately click on, when one finds one’s soulmate. Puritanical sexual mores in this country usually leave this part out of sex ed curricula—even at more progressively inclined gifted children’s schools such as ours—but unless soulmates find each other very young, the eyes need to awaken long dormant cells. Then, the brain needs to accomodate a major change in how it functions and in how much stimuli it processes—”

“So, the whole process gets overwhelming, and painful, and sometimes, the human brain short-circuits and cuts off the color vision?” When Lotor gives him a nod, Shiro huffs. “Alright, come through, Doctoral Candidate ‘I got a five on the AP exam at age fourteen and haven’t taken a single biology class since then.’”

“Honestly, as distressing as the switches between color and achromatic vision can feel, the process is remarkably logical and straightforward, relative to the human body’s standards.” Flipping his cowlick off his face, Lotor adds, “Of course, it _figures_ that one of the only situations in which our bodies can behave so neatly and rationally involves something that human science has collectively agreed to call _magic_, on the grounds that no one can otherwise explain how anything about soulmates works.”

“As a wise man once said: life finds a way.”

“That _Jurassic Park_ quote isn’t even remotely relevant, darling.”

“No, I know that, but it still sounds cool.”

As Shiro slouches back against the counter and picks up his water again, Lotor sighs. “In the face of this evidence, I must acquiesce: you may have a point in hand-wringing about ethics. Even if you refrain from approaching Keith as a romantic prospect, the near certain soulmate link between you two could attract accusations of favoritism—”

“Ugh, _Jesus_, yeah.” Shiro groans into his glass, then takes a swig. “It’s not like anyone else can work with Obaasan—much less come in to cover for me when we’re almost to midterms—but _dammit_, when we get found out by anyone but you and her…?”

In his head, the way that Shiro trails off carries great, unspoken significance that truly impresses upon Lotor the gravity of this situation and how utterly fucked—in the worst of all possible ways—Shiro will be when the other shoe finally plummets onto his head.

In reality, Lotor blinks up at him, obviously bored.

“I enjoy your _morbid humor_, darling, not your periodic slips into genuine pessimism.” Crossing his legs at the knees, Lotor explains, “Why do you assume that someone else discovering the truth is a _when_ scenario and not an _if_?”

Shiro gasps; he can’t help it.

He also can’t help nodding. His head moves like his neck’s found a will of its own.

“If,” he repeats, lips curling into a grin. “I can work with _‘if.’_”

Maybe he’s never been a _good_ artist, but as he glances at the sketchbook sheets from Keith, Shiro even has an idea for _how_ he can make the most out of this _if_. He only needs to let Keith know he’s interested. Wherever things between them want to go, they can head there once the semester’s over—but they can’t go _anywhere_ if Keith doesn’t know that Shiro _wants_ to pull on these romantic threads.


	5. Chapter 5

After stepping in it so badly with Shiro—which he _must_ have done, acting like a crazy person when he stayed after class, because the only version of events that makes sense is one where Keith has ruined everything by letting himself want too much—he expects his entire life to blow up in his face. Of course, he’d rather the world cut to the chase and outright ended, but reality never has been in the business of giving him what he wants.

Come Tuesday morning, he remains alive. He even attaches another drawing to his response essay. For this one, he looked up reference photos of primroses, which seemed lovely enough without being overly complicated to draw. Poring over different websites and Allura’s books on botany, Keith also found that primroses looked the most similar to the flowers he’d already drawn for Shiro. More of them could’ve established a sense of continuity. With help from Hunk, Allura, and Romelle in selecting pencils and markers, Keith allegedly matched the photos’ colors quite well. No, that wasn’t necessary, in the strictest sense of the term, but for Shiro’s sake, Keith wants to put in the effort.

Things ought to be simple henceforth. Keith draws flowers, he gives them to Shiro, and nothing particularly complicated happens because why would Keith’s actions matter when Shiro too likely has admirers lined up around the block like copping a feel of his pecs will give them a free iPhone 11.

Except, as he flips through the comments Shiro left on one of his responses, Keith stops dead. There, on one of Shiro’s extra pages, sits a drawing of a flower. None of Shiro’s chicken-scratch notes surround it and around the edges, Keith spots the ghosts where some lines got erased but wouldn’t entirely come off; Shiro couldn’t have doodled this carelessly. Free to focus on the (admittedly lopsided, somewhat messy) flower, Keith counts the bright little dots arranged at the center, all thirty-one of them. He traces the butt of his pen along the gentle, flowing lines that make the petals, all six of which blend into a single entity without anything keeping them separate from each other.

Granted, even from under whatever Shiro used to shade his flower, more eraser marks show through where he must’ve initially drawn guidelines, helping himself shape the blossom out of the relative nothingness of a blank, college-ruled sheet of notebook paper. Still, those little signs make Keith’s heart flutter like a moth drunk on tequila shots: Shiro put _effort_ into this drawing. Shiro took the time to sketch in pencil, line the parts he wanted in a bolder, darker pen, and then fill in shades of gray that may not correspond to reality, but who cares about that when they look so considered, purposeful, and loving.

Down at her podium, Dr. Shirogane continues her lecture about Oscar Wilde’s Decadent contemporaries as if nothing is or ever has gone wrong in this entire universe or any other one. All around him, the other students take their notes, or rifle through their bags, or try to muffle bone-deep yawns in the crooks of their sweatshirt-swaddled elbows. Lance wilts onto the table beside Keith, downing this morning’s second pumpkin spice latte as he fights to stay awake—but Keith glances toward the exits, entire brain screaming at him that he should run for the nearest restroom before he projectile vomits all over the lecture hall because he sees so much loving effort in Shiro’s lines.

No.

No, not _loving_.

Keith could pick a different word.

He _needs_ to pick a different word, because there’s no way that Shiro’s linework has any _love_ behind it. That’s _ridiculous_.

_Besides_, Keith tells himself, ducking out of class as soon as Dr. Shirogane dismisses them, _this is probably a one-time thing_.

Except that it doesn’t stop. On Friday, Keith finds both a flower stapled to his reading response, amidst Shiro’s additional notes as usual, and a folded up sheet of notebook paper on the desk that Keith has come to see as _His_, His Own. Opening up the latter, Keith finds a sketch that, if he had to guess, was meant as a bigger version of the fluffy, interwoven halo flowers that Shiro doodles on Keith’s papers instead of stars. 

Part of Keith wants to stay after discussion group, so he can ask what sort of flower Shiro intended to draw.

The more powerful part of Keith, though, compels him to bolt as soon as class ends. When Shiro tries calling after him, Keith’s already out the door. Trading their flower drawings, that’s one thing. But if Shiro catches him alone, there’s no way Keith will survive, especially not if his vision keeps flickering in and out between the monochrome that Keith _should_ be seeing and the horrible, awful, no good, very bad, vibrant visual assault that, for the life of him, he absolutely cannot understand.

Over the next weekend, Keith fills two sketchbook pages and tries to lower his expectations. For this round of flowers, he sketches the best water lilies that he can manage, with their slim, elegant petals and wide cloaks of leaves—but no matter what he does, there’s no guarantee of this leading anywhere. He colors his little blossoms in with Holbein’s _Scarlet_, because Romelle promises that it’s quite a vivid shade of red and Mom always says that red is her baby’s color. He breaks out his Copic markers for the accents, filling them in with _Red 34_ and _Red Violet 06_.

Sitting as a library table while Keith pores over his drawings, Romelle sighs, “Whatever would you do without me, darling?”

“Die, probably,” he deadpans. “Or I might mix colors that look terrible together, which is just as bad.”

Arching one eyebrow, she points out, “Shiro likely can’t even see the colors yet. If he can, however, you are putting yourself in the position to play home-wrecker. I simply want you to realize this.”

“Y’know, you’re gonna give me whiplash, if you keep changing things around like this. ‘Cause back when this whole shit started, you were telling me to go after Shiro and that he’s an idiot if he doesn’t want.”

“I stand by that. However, I don’t see the point in stressing yourself too terribly over color combinations that, to him, only look like an infinitude of grays with the line-work done in black.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Keith tells her, picking up his most trusted pencil and starting on a new sketch. “I know what I’m doing, Rom.”

In all likelihood, that’s far from true—but for right now, Romelle doesn’t need to know that.

Still, Romelle has a point. Keith can’t deny this when he’s told himself so from the start. Doodling things for Shiro doesn’t mean that Shiro will keep replying to him. Even if Shiro seems like he’s getting invested in their exchange of pictures—even if he seems like he enjoys this because why else would he put so much work into improving his work between each drawing—Keith shouldn’t let his hopes climb too high. Sooner or later, Shiro will get bored and move on to someone who actually deserves his attention, not some floppy-haired little nobody who misses his dog more than most of the people he knows back home and wants to get his motorcycle license soon.

Hearing Keith mutter these ideas, Romelle frowns like she just bit into an unexpectedly sour jelly bean. “If you actually believe any of that,” she says, “then I don’t know what to tell you. Because it doesn’t smell like reality, to me.”

“That’s because you have too much faith in me—”

“Because you are my _friend_, and I know full well that you _deserve_ it—”

“I really, _really_ don’t, though.” Although Keith sighs in resignation, he keeps working on his current sketch. Honestly, they should drop the subject and leave it alone for now. Yes, he brought it up in the first place, but if he doesn’t stop, his heart might burst clean out of his chest like some monster out of Ridley Scott’s HR Giger-inspired stress-nightmares. The only thing for Keith to do is follow his own advice and move on to some other topic.

His mouth, though, decides to add, “As far Shiro knows? I’m just some student who’s got it in his head to keep flirting with him, even though Shiro’s probably got a soulmate waiting for him somewhere. Maybe that Lotor guy he’s so close to—”

“Ew—can you _please_ shut up.” Romelle’s sour face deepens. “That sort of self-deprecation drives me crazy—”

“I’m only telling truths. Even if you don’t want to admit—”

“I saw that _Lotor_ guy kissing someone else when I followed Lance and Allura to their folklore studies class, Kitten. Someone who definitely _can’t_ be Shiro, because his skin-tone is wrong, his hair’s too light, he wears glasses, and not to mention?” She kicks Keith under the table. “Lotor called him _Adam_.”

“Doesn’t mean that Lotor isn’t Shiro’s _real_ soulmate—”

“The fact that Adam commented on Lotor’s pretty blue eyes? Suggests that you’re wrong.”

Inhaling deeply, Keith ponders her point. There’s probably a good counter-argument out there somewhere, but all Keith can come up with is, “We just don’t know what the situation is. Facts are missing. So, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions or assume that I mean anything special when Shiro probably has dozens of students sending him secret admirer notes.”

Grumbling, Romelle slouches onto the table. Pigtails flopping over her shoulders, she groans the exasperated groan that Keith so often inspires in the people who only want to help you. “If he truly saw you as a just a student,” she says with a huff like she knows everything, “then I’d hope the potential consequences of flirting with you might dissuade him from continuing to do so. Because that’s exactly what he’s _doing_, Kitten: **_flirting_** through the medium of flower drawings.”

As she locks eyes with Keith, she pouts like she means business. “He. Is. _Flirting_. With. **_You_**. I don’t know how else to explain that for you, Keith.”

In all likelihood, Romelle intends for that little speech to help. She’s Keith’s friend; she wants him to be happy.

Keith needs to bite back on a shudder, though, thanks to one simple word that she threw at him: _consequences_.

Offhand, he doesn’t know what would happen if Shiro got busted carrying such obviously romantic drawings from a student—but Keith knows: things will be _bad_. Consequences will fall on someone’s head, and because Shiro’s nominally in the more powerful position here, he’ll no doubt eat the brunt of them. Even though Keith started this mess, Shiro will end up in trouble for Keith’s fuck-ups. Whenever they get caught, there’s no way any aspect of the fallout to be good. Not for Shiro, not for Keith, not for anybody.

So, clearly, Shiro won’t continue this. He’s going to stop, and soon, because Keith isn’t anybody special to him.

Come Tuesday morning, Shiro proves Keith wrong again. Stapled to his response piece from last Tuesday, amidst the four sheets of handwritten notes on lined, college-ruled pages, he finds a drawing of Shiro’s. Like the others, Shiro signed and dated this piece. The petals and stem are as lopsided as ever, as if there’s some unseen wind trying to blow the flower over or a magical force that wants to crush it. Yet, as overwhelmed as Keith would feel in the flower’s current position, he can’t help feeling like Shiro didn’t _intend _for his picture to come off that way. Something about the flower’s movement feels like Shiro meant to draw a kiss in floral form.

To the right-hand side, near the bottom of the page, he included a message, scrawled in his endearingly hopeless chicken-scratch, _“Please don’t tell Obaasan or too many other people? I’m really not supposed to play favorites with anybody in class.”_

Fuck Keith’s life. Of course he needs to put the stop to this—that’s only fair when he’s the one who started things.

No matter how much it kills him, Keith can’t send Shiro any further flowers.

Simple though that resolution should be, Keith only makes it through the weekend and Monday because he doesn’t run into Shiro. At the library with Hunk and Allura, working his way through research for Dr. Shirogane’s final paper, Keith lets his eyes wander and thinks that they find Shiro. Short hair that’s all dark from the back, broad shoulders, tall and dressed in dark colors like Shiro’s—but then, they turn around and Keith spots the t-shirt underneath their button-up.

More importantly, he spots the words _“Dykes On Bikes” _splashed across a chest that, while impressive, looks buxom in a very different way from Shiro’s. So, definitely not him, which shouldn’t fill Keith with regret and emptiness like this. Good thing Keith has friends around to keep him from doing anything too crazy. For instance, he can’t run off to look for Shiro with Hunk and Allura theoretically judging him. (Not that they actually _would_, but the threat of their judgment would keep Keith in line.)

Tuesday morning, Keith almost asks if he can sit with Lance in the lecture hall—but only _almost_. Loneliness bites, even in a limited form such as sitting by himself, but it’s too early to deal with a kinda-sorta-friend who might as well have a hospital-grade IV pumping his veins full of pumpkin spice lattes.

When Shiro hands back the latest round of reading responses, though, Keith wishes he had Lance on-hand to act as a human cold shower.

Shiro shouldn’t have sent Keith any more flowers. He shouldn’t have even drawn them in the first place, much less attached them to Keith’s paper and handed them back. The messy, sketchy image of a chrysanthemum—at least, that’s what Keith thinks it’s supposed to be—should not stare him in the face, stark against the lines on Shiro’s notebook sheets. Keith should not find any odd, misplaced dots on the next page of Shiro’s notes for him, evidence of where whatever tools he used to shade in his petals bled through the paper.

Yet, there the flower is, almost smiling at Keith while his heart tries to burst out of his chest.

Keith shouldn’t linger after class, not even to properly appreciate the view of Shiro’s backside as he argues with the projector’s screen. Too much longer in Shiro’s presence and Keith might ruin everything for both of them. Unfortunately, Keith is only human—far too human—and even though his dark colored slacks obscure some of the details, Shiro has the greatest ass that Keith has ever seen.

_Besides_, he tells himself, _maybe there’s no harm in looking._

This notion lasts until Shiro turns around and smiles at him so easily, it’s like he didn’t just catch Keith checking him out like books at the library. Equally tranquil, as if he genuinely has no idea what Keith was just doing, mere seconds ago, Shiro says, “Hey. Do you want to talk about something?”

One hand on his backpack, which still sits on _His Spot_ at the table, Keith makes himself shake his head. He should make himself _leave_ as well, but instead—“I mean? Not unless _you_ want to talk about something? Anything? With me?”

God, he needs duct tape permanently installed on his mouth. That might keep him from flubbing social interactions like this.

Despite this awkwardness—and despite the fact that Shiro shouldn’t follow Keith anywhere or want to spend more time with him than absolutely necessary—Shiro perks up at this offer. Once he has his jacket on, he bounds over to Keith, radiating eagerness, the way that Kosmo always does when Keith heads home for a break or a long weekend. As they head out of the lecture hall together, Shiro practically bounces on the balls of his feet. Worse, he doesn’t spell out what’s on his mind or even pose Keith any pointed questions that might _hint_ at what Shiro thinks he’s on about.

“Nice jacket,” Keith says for want of _something_ to break up the silence. If they’d stayed quiet too much longer, he might’ve choked on Shiro’s inexplicable excitement. “Is that real leather?”

“Mhm—it’s vintage, too. Do you want to feel how it feels?” Grinning, Shiro holds up an arm. When Keith blinks at him bemusedly, his expression dims and his hand darts toward his pocket. “…Sorry, I—I didn’t mean to be untoward or anything like that. Or to act like I’m _so_ clever because I quoted a line from a Kate Bush song that happened to be appropriate.”

“Do you even know what _‘untoward’_ means?” Hearing himself, Keith cringes. Some part of him hopes Shiro doesn’t ask, or that Keith can successfully blame that wincing on the bright sunlight as they step outside. “Sorry, I just? You don’t act like the untoward people I’ve met. You _care_ about not being them, for one thing.” This gets Shiro to shrug as if he doesn’t want Keith to think he’s taken offense. Or maybe he genuinely hasn’t. Maybe Lance or Romelle could tell which one, but Keith’s totally adrift as he says, “So, what? Did you find that in a thrift shop? On Etsy? In the attic?”

“Nah, it’s my godfather’s—or it used to be, anyway.” How is it that fewer than fifty words from Keith can bring Shiro’s smile back so brightly? Aside from the obvious changes brought about by getting older, he has the same open, easy joy that Keith sees every time he gets to class early, looking at the old photo of Shiro and his Mom that Dr. Shirogane uses as her desktop background. “The jacket has history—uh, by which I mean, he was wearing it, the first time he saw colors. So, Uncle Mitch really didn’t want to give it up, but it doesn’t fit him anymore, and he and Bennett—his husband, that is—were moving—”

“Jesus, did you know _any_ straight people, when you were growing up?” Although this doesn’t set Shiro frowning again, he does tilt his head like he doesn’t understand the question. Keith sighs. “Your godfather has a husband. Dr. Shirogane’s mentioned your aunt and her wife before. I _know_ she has a memoir or autoethnography or something where she talks about her and her husband’s bisexual polyamory—”

“Wait, how do you know about that? It only came out last spring, with Columbia University Press—”

“My uncle got an advance copy so he could review it for _GLQ_—”

Shiro whistles, impressed, then wrinkles his nose. “But the reviewer in _GLQ_ was—”

“Not my paternal uncle. They don’t really talk to us—”

“Mood, really. But seriously, the reviewer…” Despite staying (blessedly, thankfully) locked in shades of gray, Shiro’s eyes sparkle so brightly, Keith wishes he had sunglasses. He shudders, but that could be on Shiro’s eyes _or_ the mid-autumn chill going on. At least he keeps himself together as Shiro says, “M. Kolivan Marmoriya? Like, the one who practically _invented_ queer Galra history? _He’s_ your uncle?”

Heat blossoms on Keith’s cheeks. Yet, even as he hunches his shoulders and hides in the fall of his hair, his mouth somehow spits out, “One of them, yeah. Mom’s eldest brother. Thace is the middle one, but he’s more in what he and his department head call political history—”

“Except _all_ history is _inherently_ political—”

“Believe me, _I know_. I’ve been hearing debates about that around the dinner table since I was a kid and Mom was still turning her dissertation into her first book.” That puts a look of recognition and understanding on Shiro’s face—but rather than ask, Keith tells him, “Anyway, Mom’s in military history, so unless you have some secret fondness for, I don’t know, studies of women’s involvement in Communist Daibazaal’s military, or the queer, Eastern Eurasian poets of World War One? You probably haven’t read her stuff, either.”

Here, Shiro is supposed to agree that, just like everyone else who’s ever heard from Keith about what Mom does, he hasn’t read her stuff. He isn’t supposed to slip into a pensive expression, much less lose himself so much in thought that he doesn’t fix his longer, floofy clump of hair when the wind blows it over. Please, for once, can Shiro _stop_ being so blatantly, undeniably special, like Keith really needs this in his life? He needs Shiro to just be the same petty, dishonest, shallow garbage as most other people so Keith can smother anything that remotely feels like a crush, stop hallucinating things that might be colors, and move on with his life.

“I won’t pretend I’ve read as much of your Mom’s work as you have of Obaasan’s,” Shiro finally says, leading them off the main quad and onto a path that Keith usually doesn’t walk. “But I _have_ read her book about queer war poets… Lotor kept quoting her introduction at me when he thought I was quote, ‘acting as though queer war poetry began and ended with Siegfried Sassoon, which terribly insults both of our intelligences’ unquote.”

For all he shouldn’t, Keith can’t help snorting. “Yeah, well, Mom’s book would teach you better than that.”

“That, it did. I must have some older edition of it, though—unless it hasn’t been reissued? She would’ve published as Krolia Kogane if it had, right?” Shiro frowns sympathetically. Keith didn’t tell his face to do something that Shiro wouldn’t like, but with the way he looks, it must have. “…You don’t need to answer that, if it’s complicated or messy for you.”

“It isn’t. Not really.”

If they weren’t walking, Keith would close his eyes so he could think better. As it stands, he has sunlight glaring into them and a swamp of molasses in the spot where his brain’s supposed to go. Exacerbating matters, as they pass the library, some unforgivably loud, allegedly singing idiot beats the strings of an acoustic guitar and, with a voice like Thace’s ancient, perpetually pissed off cat, yowls, “_Oh, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff. It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough. You’re gonna have to face it: you’re addicted to love_.”

Guilty heat floods Keith’s face again. Grasping for a distraction, he explains, “Mom’s barely published _anything_ as Krolia Kogane. A couple early papers and conference presentations, I guess? She only took Dad’s name for long enough to put it on my birth certificate. Then, she wanted to change back.”

Shiro nods. “If she’s proud of her family, that makes a lot of sense—”

“I mean, Dr. Shirogane makes _your_ Mom sound like a spitfire. She must’ve _debated_ or…”

Keith trails off, watching Shiro shake his head. “As far as I’ve heard, Mom couldn’t get rid of her family’s name fast enough. Considering what her brothers and their parents are like? I don’t _get it_ in the same way she did, but I understand why she wanted to distance herself from them.” As though this is the sort of thing that he confesses to just anybody, on any day, for any old reason, Shiro quirks his shoulders. “If it isn’t Uncle Kaoru telling me to hurry up and marry a nice, Japanese man before I pass my sell-by date, then it’s Michiko, his elder daughter, and Tenō-Obaasama telling me I should go on a diet because I’ll never find a husband, much less my soulmate, if I let myself get _too chubby_.”

For several moments, Keith can’t think of anything to say; his brain’s been replaced by the car-crash sounds of squealing tires, crunching metal, and shattering glass.

“Are they _crazy_?”

“They would tell you, ‘No.’”

“How can they _not_ be?”

“Well, I can’t say that they’ve been tested or anything, since they largely have the same negative opinions of therapy that you see all over Japan? But the way they see it, they’re telling the essential truths that I don’t want to hear.” Shiro pulls a face, lips pursed like he’s tasted some incredibly sour milk. “Which, with Michiko and Tenō-Obaasama, usually means reminding me that, unless I’m willowy, emaciated, and five seconds from passing out, they think I’m fat.”

Keith seethes, barely able to restrain himself from spluttering. “Have they _seen you_ lately?”

“In Kyoto, last spring break, yeah. I took Lotor and his boyfriend out there for _hanami_, cherry blossom season.” He inhales deeply, building up to something—but Shiro doesn’t give himself the release of a sigh. “Unfortunately, visiting Kasumi, the cousin who actually likes me? Meant that we had to spend time with the rest, too. Any time we saw them, Michiko didn’t shut up—not until we bumped into each other and her arm knocked against my abs. Our grandmother didn’t shut up at all, _and_ they insulted me in Japanese because they thought that Lotor and Adam don’t speak it, so—”

“_Fuck_,” Keith hisses. “What a pair of condescending pricks.”

“Here’s the killer: their behavior during that visit was _significantly_ toned down from usual.” Ducking his chin, Shiro buries his hands in his pockets. “Speaking ill of my own family must sound awful? But in my defense, on top of everything else, they don’t use my Dad’s name, when they bring him up. As much as I hate them telling me to get married, it’s still a huge step up from what they did _before_ the Supreme Court ruled on _Obergefell vs. Hodges_.”

Although Keith almost doesn’t want to ask, he murmurs, “What did they do before?”

“Dealer’s choice between a few different options.”

“Guessing all of them leave something to be desired?”

Abruptly, Shiro turns and leads them toward the science building. Holding the door open for Keith, he goes on, “Most of the time, they ignored anything I said about being gay. Sometimes, they’d tell me to stop talking like that, or to stop being so rude about girls I hadn’t even met yet, or that the right young lady would find me eventually. Other times, they told me not to joke like that because I shamed the family by suggesting such things. After my Mom and Dad died, they tried to tell me that she wouldn’t have appreciated me saying such terrible things—y’know, never mind that I figured it out really young, and the only thing she said—”

“Was that she loved you as you were, always, without question, because she’s your Mom?”

“Yeah, pretty much. You got all of them except for one thing.” Keith already wants to disappear into the linoleum floor, but his insides writhe even more over the lack of malice in Shiro’s voice as he says, “She told me to try and keep the truth from her family. Not from Dad, Satomi, their parents, Uncle Mitch, Bennett, and Naoko—I mean, obviously not, since every single one of them is queer—”

“Even your Dad? But, like… How would you _know_?”

Shiro makes a noncommittal sound and pushes his floof off his face. “I… had a really rough patch when I was a teenager, and a particularly toxic influence in my life. The people who loved me wanted to see him _out_ of my life, but I was thirteen and an _idiot_, so…”

Keith wishes he could read Shiro’s face more easily—but he also wishes that his vision weren’t flickering between vibrancy and grays all over again. He follows when Shiro ducks into a stairwell, trails after him as they head up, and powers through the feeling like he might be sick. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening _because that’s crazy_. Why would the universe subject Shiro to something so horrible? Why would it chain him to Keith with a soulmate-level bond and absolutely no say in the matter? That’s _awful_.

“At one point,” Shiro goes on, mercifully derailing Keith’s thoughts, “I started mouthing off to Aunt Satomi and Uncle Mitch about how objecting to this toxic influence _totally_ made them like my Dad, who wouldn’t have understood either, _obviously_, because he was only a dumb straight person—”

“Which they objected to? Because… he wasn’t dumb?” Keith should shut up. Right now. He knows he should, but—“It’s not like I was _eavesdropping_, okay? But last week, when I showed up early, you and Dr. Shirogane mentioned CalTech, so…”

“Yeah, that’s where Dad and Uncle Mitch got their PhDs—and where they met each other.” Chuckling good-naturedly, Shiro shoots Keith a wry smile. “Patience doesn’t come naturally to you either, huh?”

Grumbling, Keith somehow keeps himself from telling Shiro, _Sorry, but I’m wasting all my patience-related spoons on trying not to jump you in the middle of this crowded hallway._

(Calling this space “crowded” might stretch the truth—but more people than the two of them litter the corridor to… _wherever_ Shiro’s wandering.)

With a shrug more charming than it has any right to be, Shiro sighs. “So, I ran my mouth about my late father, which made his sister and best friend decide to inform me of exactly how wrong I was—which is how I learned more than I’d ever wanted to know about who my Dad and Uncle Mitch dated before they met Mom and Bennett, respectively.”

Keith snorts. “What, like they dated each other or something?”

Here, Shiro should laugh with him, or tell him that he’s talking ridiculously and then fill in what the _real_ answer is.

Instead, ever committed to upending Keith’s expectations, Shiro huffs and says, “I mean, having seen old pictures of Uncle Mitch in his prime? I can’t really blame my Dad for having a bi awakening over him.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.” As the words leave his lips, Keith rolls his eyes. Following Shiro past a pair of desks, into one of office-blocks set aside for professors, he clarifies, “Not like—I mean, pics of your godfather being that hot. I don’t believe any godfather is legit bi awakening levels of hot.”

“Well, technically, he wasn’t a godfather at the time—”

“You know what I mean, right?”

Fiddling with his phone, Shiro smirks. “What? Sirius Black isn’t on your ‘I’d hit that’ list?”

“Yeah, sure, I totally wanna jump the guy who thought it was all in good fun, trying to straight-up murder a classmate by proxy and probably get one of his _best friends_ thrown into magic clinical depression torture prison because that friend, the werewolf, was said proxy.” Before he can stop himself, Keith makes a gagging sound and sticks out his tongue. “Give me Remus Lupin or give me death.”

“Good to know. Guess that settles who I should dress up as for Halloween.”

Keith’s brain skids to a halt. His mouth starts fumbling over syllables, failing to string any actual words together. Good thing that Shiro stops walking outside someone’s office, because in tandem with his brain, Keith’s feet stop working; if they walked any further down the corridor, he’d probably trip all over himself. With his luck, he’d need Shiro to carry him to the ER, rather than simply needing Shiro to clarify why he’s gone back to smirking like he’s Up To Something.

“Question, first,” he says, tapping his phone as if trying to keep it from going back to sleep, “do you want to see the picture from before Dad met Mom, the one shot that embarrasses me as well, or both of them?”

“What, are you offering to show me your baby pictures?” The way that Shiro bats his eyes suggests that he’d answer in the affirmative. Unable to stop himself, Keith flushes warm. “Sure, whatever, show me both, I guess.”

“So adventurous—I appreciate that.”

Whatever Shiro means by that, he swans over to Keith’s side. In the first photo he shows off—a scan of some old Polaroid picture—two tall, broad-shouldered men lean on a counter, looking at each other as though no one else exists. Aside from his glasses and the hint of a belly pushing out against his t-shirt, the one on the left is the spitting image of Shiro. His hair’s different, too—he cut it shorter than Shiro has his own, he doesn’t have a floofy forelock, and no section has been bleached out—but overall, Shiro’s Dad pass as his twin. If not for the date scribbled on the white strip beneath the photo—_Saturday, February 23rd, 1980_—Keith might think Shiro’s having him on.

While clearly not a blood relation of the Shiroganes, the guy on the right wears the same jacket that Shiro’s clad in now. Unfortunately for Keith’s previously held opinions, he can’t deny: Shiro’s godfather was easy on the eyes. Broader than Shiro’s Dad but thick with more muscle than not, this Uncle Mitch guy wears a black, military-looking beret; Keith can’t decide if he’s trying too hard for some undefined effect, or if he’s too up himself to notice that the cap could come off as pretentious and affected. Still, with a cheat and a jawline like that? No wonder Shiro’s Dad had a bi awakening over this guy.

Only one actual bad thing jumps out at Keith, initially: he feels like he knows Shiro’s “Uncle Mitch,” even though there’s no way that he could. He wouldn’t mind if the leather jacket were the sole thing striking him as familiar—but the more Keith examines the photo,the more he would swear he recognizes the dark goatee and the one scarred-over eye. He can’t put his finger on _why_, though, which sets his stomach reeling.

Or maybe that’s the way the photo’s gray shades blink in and out for a moment, then settle into the vibrancy that won’t stop plaguing Keith.

On the positive side, maybe he’s getting used to whatever’s going wrong to make his brain keep treating him like this, teasing him like Keith doesn’t already know that he won’t end up being Shiro’s soulmate. At least, that’s how Keith chooses to interpret the lack of pain as Shiro explains the photo for him.

“I’ve heard a few different stories about this shot,” he says, voice dropping low without quite whispering. “The gist is that they were still seeing each other romantically, at the time, but it was in a weird limbo where they couldn’t decide if they wanted to keep going on like that or not. Mom was going to enter the picture soon—well, in the next eighteen months or something—but they didn’t suspect that she would happen, and, well. Someone caught a candid shot of them at an old friend’s birthday party.”

“Cute,” Keith agrees without thinking about it. “Unless you’re trying to embarrass _yourself_ by just showing off how you look exactly like your Dad.” A dry chuckle escapes Keith, and he adds, “Next, you’re gonna tell me that you have your Mom’s eyes and your godfather couldn’t take custody of you when they died because he got arrested or something.”

Rather than laugh, Shiro puckers his mouth as if he’s sucked on a particularly noxious lemon. “I _do_ have her eyes, actually,” he says, swiping through his photo album, searching for the next picture he intends to let Keith see. “And as far as I know, Uncle Mitch has never been arrested? He and Bennett had a few near misses, back when they were part of queer, proto-ACT UP activism and demonstrations against the Reagan administration—but Uncle Mitch always managed to get out of dodge instead of getting cuffed.”

“…Oh,” Keith says, dumbly. He should probably have something else to tack on—_anything_ else that could function as an apology, and not what he actually comes up with: “When I was in middle school, Thace and Antok thought that Kolivan might not get tenure? Because someone could’ve brought up all the times _he_ ever got arrested for protesting against New York’s handling of people with AIDS or all the loud, queer agitating he did, in his heyday.”

“Good thing they were wrong.” If Shiro has anything else he wants to suppose, then he doesn’t say it.

Mostly, he keeps his thoughts to himself because he turns his phone horizontally and lets Keith see the next picture—which, again, forces Keith to admit that, once upon a time, Shiro’s godfather was certifiable eye-candy.

Another scan of a much older photo, this one has an irritatingly bright _11-22-91_ stamped across the lower left-hand corner. Fortunately, Keith doesn’t need to look at that too long. Despite the rest of the picture feeling faded, the image draws his eyes. The eleven years that passed between this shot and the last show in Uncle Mitch’s fuller face, his thicker goatee, and his softer physique (though, in fairness, he still looks like he works out pretty regularly). Standing in someone’s kitchen, he has a counter behind him, a chair beside him, and a cringing, nauseated expression. In lieu of his cap, he shows off a bald head, on which someone has cracked an egg.

Keith doesn’t need to ask who did that; the answer stands on the counter, just to Uncle Mitch’s left, wearing a mop of messy, all-dark hair and a _She-Ra: Princess of Power_ t-shirt over a pair of pajama bottoms. Keith can’t identify the pattern on the pants, but however old Shiro was when someone took this picture, he doesn’t look _that_ different from the one on Dr. Shirogane’s desktop. Shorter, yes, and maybe a little rounder in the face and torso, but he was probably _much_ younger, so that makes sense. Either way, Shiro grins like he’s exceptionally pleased with himself for smashing an egg on his godfather’s head and possibly like the photographer caught him in mid-laugh.

Hazarding a guess, Keith would say the same of the bespectacled, ponytailed woman at the far-left side of the picture. She tries to hide her mouth behind her hand, but doesn’t fully succeed. The joy she finds in the situation comes out quite clearly—and offhand, she looks a _lot_ like Shiro and his Dad. Even her shoulders, while a bit narrower than theirs, strain the limits of her blouse.

“Aunt Satomi,” Shiro clarifies, probably noticing how long Keith blinks at her. “We were supposed to be working with Bennett, Naoko, and my grandparents, making dinner and a cake, setting up my Mom’s surprise birthday party. She and Dad weren’t teaching that day, so he took her out to keep her distracted. I was sick, hence me being at home on a Friday instead of at preschool, but I really, really wanted to help put her party together.”

“But they didn’t let you?” Keith frowns. “Was it a, ‘You’re too young, just hang out in the kitchen’ thing? With a side order of, ‘You’re sick, don’t make it worse or get your germs on everything’?”

“Pretty much. Which I took exception to, which, uh.” Almost guiltily, Shiro looks away. “Led directly to this incident.”

As he admits this, Shiro’s cheeks darken. Something blooms on them, next, seeping down his face and neck. This can’t be real—at least, Keith can’t be seeing _real_ colors—but still, his mouth floods with the taste of strawberries.

“Sort of, like,” he starts, quickly realizing that he has no idea where this thought wants to go. “Like, they tell you, ‘Don’t climb on that,’ so you do it just because they told you not to?”

“Earned myself a time-out in Obaasan’s home-office for that and everything. She was impressed with how I managed to climb up there, but…” He shrugs. “I still got a lecture about how that was very dangerous and no one wanted me getting hurt.”

Shiro takes a deep breath and from the sound of it, he’s working himself up, preparing to say something big—but then, he goes quiet. As he leans against the wall, something about the air between them feels _strange_. Burning without fire. Freezing without cold. Crackling without any visible electricity—then, Shiro smiles, and his eyes sparkle as if he’s genuinely happy with what he’s seeing, and Keith forgets how to fucking breathe. One of them should say something, before these feelings burrow any further into Keith’s veins and make him do something stupid.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” Shiro starts, as if on cue, like he can _tell_ how much Keith needs this. “That was a really long way for us to go. And it got way off the point of confirming that yeah, I _did_ know straight people, when I was growing up. None in my _immediate_ family, but even in California, figuring out in _kindergarten_ that you like other boys…”

“Can absolutely _suck_?” Watching Shiro frown hits Keith’s chest like a steel-toed boot. “I’m sorry, Shiro.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t know—and if I’d minded, I would’ve just left.” How can he smile this genuinely so soon after implying that he spent most, if not all, of his time in school getting bullied for being gay? “But that’s enough about me. What’d you _actually_ want to talk about, before I monopolized the conversation like that?”

Keith blinks at Shiro for a moment.

Then, for two.

A third one, after that.

On the fourth, he relocates his voice—but all he manages to say is, “…Um?”

“That… That’s why you stayed after lecture, right?” Shiro tilts his head, looking every bit as confused as Keith feels. “Because you wanted to talk to me about something? Which I then derailed? And I talked over you like a total ass—”

“Stop talking like that,” Keith snaps. His voice doesn’t go that sharp—but he still hunches in around himself. “I didn’t think you were a jerk. I don’t think that. We were just—it was nice to, like—why would you even _think_—”

Shiro starts in on an explanation—_“Because I took over everything…”_—but shuts up when the door in front of them swings open.

Keith shouldn’t groan, but he can’t stop himself. All the campus office-blocks look more or less the same, so even if hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in Shiro, Keith might not have noticed that they’d gone down to the Physics department. Maybe, though, paying better attention would’ve prevented him from getting caught off-guard by the ample figure of Dr. Iverson looming in this threshold. He wouldn’t have been surprised by the broad shoulders, or the belly stretching out his button-up, or the height that, while impressive, shouldn’t be enough to make Keith feel so tiny.

In turn, not getting caught off-guard would mean that Keith wouldn’t wilt under Dr. Iverson’s scrutiny as he arches the brow over his scarred over eye and—_Oh, for the love of_—

“Wait a minute,” Keith mutters. “Is this really—”

“Uncle Mitch,” Shiro says, voice brighter than his fond smile and infuriatingly eager eyes. “I’m not late, am I?”

“Nah, my meeting with my TA ran later than it should have anyway.” As soft as his expression goes for Shiro, Dr. Iverson slips right into frowning as he looks in Keith’s direction. “Can I help _you_ with something, Mr. Kogane?”

“No, sir, I—it’s not like—this wasn’t—”

“Keith came down here with me.” Perplexed, Shiro glances between the two of them. “…Do you two already know each other?”

“_It’s not my fault_,” Keith starts.

Dr. Iverson rolls his good eye. “I had your new little friend in my intro class a couple years ago—”

“_Griffin_ started it—”

“I don’t give a Sam Heck who started it. _Both_ of you went too far—”

“Shiro, please, it wasn’t like he’s saying—”

“You haven’t let me _finish_ what I’m saying.” A quick glare shuts Keith up, then Iverson sighs at his apparent godson. “Kogane and Griffin were the best students in that class, hands down. It could’ve been _great_, if not for how out-of-hand intense their competition for the top spot got, eventually—”

“Yeah, well, that’s your opinion,” Keith huffs, folding his arms over his chest. Sneering like this probably makes him sound petulant and stupid—but whatever, Iverson’s probably gonna warn Shiro off of Keith anyway, so why hold back. “_My_ opinion is still that we didn’t deserve having class participation points dropped like you did to us, _sir_. Whatever Griffin’s problem is, we kept the discussion _moving_, more often than not.”

Iverson heaves a tired sigh. “I’m not doing this with you today, Kogane—”

“Yeah, uh,” Shiro drawls as if he needs a hundred naps. “I’d appreciate it if both of you didn’t—”

“You aren’t my student anymore, so if you’re Shiro’s friend? Then what happened in class doesn’t need to matter.” Looking back to his godson, Iverson says, “Kashi, let’s get you lunch before your grandmother decides I’m letting you skip.”

With a short nod, Shiro pushes off the wall. He could leave well enough alone—but he holds up, giving Keith another smile. “I’ll see you at discussion group later,” he promises. “And if you need anything, you know where to find me, right?”

Keith agrees because he _does_ know where to find Shiro. He put his office hours, school email address, and phone number on the discussion group-exclusive syllabus, which Keith’s kept pristine, stuck in one of the folders dividing the subject-sections of his spiral-bound notebook. If seeking Shiro out could lead him anywhere even halfway decent, Keith wouldn’t need to search that hard or expend much effort, getting ahold of him.

But as he watches Shiro and Iverson leave, Keith buries his face in his hands and reminds himself: he _cannot_, under any circumstances, let anything like this happen again.

He needs to back off. He needs to give this crush on Shiro up before he gets somebody hurt. He needs to leave Shiro alone instead of chasing wild fantasies that will never come to pass and couldn’t come to pass, even if Shiro weren’t currently his TA.

Skulking outside once more, Keith also makes a mental note to ask Thace’s husband what could make him start hallucinating colors. Ulaz has a medical degree, not just caffeine, his own wits, and several tabs of WebMD open on his mobile browser. Asking Ulaz might give Keith an easier time of fixing whatever’s decided to be broken in his dumbass brain. Keith _should not_ be seeing colors, period, much less enduring them until halfway through dinner in the dining hall.

The upside of all this is that Shiro should definitely give up on Keith—but when Keith gets to the lecture hall on Friday morning, he finds one of Shiro’s Nature Valley granola bars sitting by _His Spot_. For one brief, glimmering moment, Keith lets himself hope that someone else, who happens to favor the same brand, simply forgot their snack and that this has nothing to do with Shiro.

Then, he spots the Post-It note beneath the package, and the scribbled message: _Just in case you forgot breakfast. ♡_

Jesus—at this rate, Shiro might be serious about planning to dress up as the most fuckable _Harry Potter_ character for Halloween, next week.

Fuck Keith’s life, he hopes not.


	6. Chapter 6

Not that Shiro had an actual plan in mind, drawing all these flowers for Keith, but in the seven weeks since he left that first drawing behind on his desk, Shiro feels like all these covert art-trades should have amounted to _something_. Maybe not _much_ of something, but more than aimless attempts at dancing around each other despite Shiro’s love life having two left feet, an inner ear infection that’s left it horribly unbalanced, and a sadistic cat trying to make it trip all over itself.

Shiro doesn’t even need that much from Keith, just a sign that he hasn’t offended him or done something wrong. Instead, Shiro’s kept drawing flowers and he’s kept doodling them on Keith’s papers, near the parts that he most wants to highlight. He’s kept attaching his messy, misshapen sketches to Keith’s assignments, taking Keith’s subtle cue to use paper-clips instead of staples so Keith won’t need to rip the pages. Shiro’s even looked up references and hauled himself down to the campus greenhouses, trying to find out what a pomegranate blossom looks like.

Yet, he’s gone forty-eight days without getting anything back from Keith. Not a drawing, not a sketch, not even a doodle dashed off on a piece of paper that he balled up and tossed into the recycling bin on his way out of class like an undercover operative trying to schedule a clandestine rendezvous. Worse yet, Keith keeps running away when Shiro tries talking to him after class.

He didn’t even say anything about Shiro’s Professor Lupin costume. Sure, Shiro threw everything together with what he had kicking around his closet, plus a few things he borrowed from Lotor, but he thought that he did a decent job. He _thought_ that he was still on the right side of subtlety, not going too hard or too much at risk of getting himself and Keith noticed.

Of course, maybe the avoidance shouldn’t surprise Shiro, given the part where Keith is technically his student until the semester ends. If he came on too strong, then that could have scared Keith off as well. Shiro only meant to convey interest, but maybe he seemed _too_ interested? Maybe he was too much—or maybe he came off like he’s already looking for an apartment they can lease together and renting a U-Haul for his stuff—and Keith understandably didn’t want to pursue anything because he decided that Shiro’s too intense for him?

Every aspect of this would be easier if Shiro could just _ask_ Keith, but aside from Lotor, the only person he can openly discuss this with is Obaasan. Keith has displayed an unfortunate talent for evading Shiro, and anyone else might rat Keith and Shiro out to someone who could make their lives Hell. Lotor won’t, and Adam and Acxa probably wouldn’t. Zethrid wouldn’t, if only because she finds the entire situation hilarious—but Obaasan’s office is as close to a truly Safe Space as Shiro’s going to get. She lets him vent about everything that’s on his mind, free from judgment, not even about the situation with Keith.

Granted, it helps that she sees everything going on with Keith less as a serious ethical issue and more as the most recent chapter in her only grandchild’s ongoing epic of romantic ineptitude. Sometimes, Obaasan even seems to enjoy his whining over the abysmal state of his crush, and why wouldn’t she? It proves that Her Baby hasn’t given up on love, Shiro guesses. Plus, the more often he talks to her, the more often colors flicker into his field of vision and the longer they stick around.

Unfortunately, this Thursday has it out for Shiro personally, on top of marking nearly five weeks since Keith last exchanged one of their flower-drawings. As soon as he finds his bike chain tangled, he feels the day going Hellward on a runaway scooter. Undeniably like the fool from that old song who fell in love with the eponymous Layla, Shiro trusts things to improve. He puts his faith in the universe to calm down and give him a break, and in himself to avoid ruining anything too badly.

One piece he messes up, right off the bat: he shouldn’t let himself get crestfallen when he finally gets to the office and checks his mailbox. Pawing through the papers stacked up for him, he finds two interdepartmental memos that Dr. Sanda could have easily sent by email, three fliers about different student groups squeezing in their last bake sales before winter break, five late assignments, eleven scribbly post-it notes from Slav (who isn’t even _in_ this department and should take the hint to quit bothering Shiro about his nonsense), and six anonymous complaints about the argument that broke out at last night’s meeting of the campus eating disorder support group. Among all of this, exactly zero signs of Keith emerge.

With a sigh, Shiro skims over the complaints. Unlike the state of his mailbox, they meet Shiro’s expectations to the letter: Luka from Obaasan’s class unwittingly misgendered both Rolo and Nyma. It was only Luka’s first meeting after she’d spent weeks scaring herself out of coming, so she didn’t know better. She apologized without a fuss, but Merla turned around to lead a dogpile, despite being cis herself. Understandably, the whole mess left several people feeling uncomfortable, and as one of the co-moderators, with Acxa, Shiro has the job of fixing things again.

In light of all that, Shiro would get some serious peace of mind if he found a missive from Keith. Even a simple note that told Shiro why he’s pulled back so hard after previously seeming to enjoy their art-trades—Shiro might not enjoy the rejection, but at least he’d understand what’s going on. At least an explanation would make some sense out of whatever’s transpired to break everything between them before they’d truly started.

Slogging through this morning’s class makes Shiro want to scream. Once it’s over, though, he dares once more to imagine things improving.

Lunchtime provides a perfect opportunity for today to turn itself around, starting with the postcards that decorate Obaasan’s door. When he skulks up to her office, Shiro can’t help smiling over their brightly colored slogans like, _“Heterosexuality isn’t NORMAL, only COMMON,” “Protect trans students,” _and, _“A woman’s place is in the revolution.”_ No matter how many times he sees them, and no matter how well he knows that Obaasan has been a spitfire since her childhood, reminders like these never fail to make him happy. When she calls him in, Shiro tries not to vibrate with too much obvious excitement.

Good thing, too. Immediately, he ends up groaning at the messy-haired, bespectacled person sitting opposite his grandmother.

For his own part, Shiro simply chuckles. “Good to see you too, Starlight.”

“You have your own grandmother on this campus. Go eat lunch in _her_ office.” Despite what he says, Shiro shuts the door behind him. Settling next to Adam, Shiro gently kicks his ankle by way of letting him know that he doesn’t really need to leave. “Or better yet, go find your boyfriend. It’s his long day; he’d probably like a chance to see you.”

“Normally, I would, but he got called down to Hedrick. Someone needed him to clean up a sentient mess shaped like his mother.” Briefly, Adam seems to debate saying anything else about this—but as he cleans his glasses on his sleeve, he adds, “So, for once, I guess that Hagnerva didn’t come to work hungover today? Mostly because she came to work still drunk instead. Which any _sane_ person would consider ample reason to cancel her advanced bio-chem class’s lab block, but…”

“But unfortunately, as she’s proven so many times before, Hagnerva.”

“Hagnerva,” Adam agrees. “Dot, dot, motherfucking _dot_.” He sighs into his palms, nudging his glasses onto his forehead so he can rub his eyes and the bridge of his nose. “I offered to go with Lotor, but he said that he’d handle the situation better on his own. On the plus, he’s optimistic that someone might finally force his mother to get _help_, but…” Adam shrugs. “We’ll see, I guess. Anyway, I figured he might come here after he’s done, so… Here I am.”

In all due fairness, Shiro has heard worse excuses for gate-crashing.

He’s also endured worse things than losing his chance to complain at Obaasan today. With Adam staying, they could let everything go now and slip into some normal conversation about Shiro’s and Adam’s dissertations, or who in the department has earned Obaasan’s ire this week (give or take the stories of how and why they’ve done so), or the relative morality and ethics of starting an alleged student group exclusively so one can use the allotted budget to xerox a series of homemade zines. They start down several such tracks, and as far as Shiro can tell, everything’s going well.

Except during a lull in the conversation, rather than letting Shiro eat his lunch in peace, Adam bats at his shoulder like a kitten at a sunbeam. “So, Takashi. Why did you want me to leave so badly, when you first showed up?”

“If I’d wanted you to leave, then we wouldn’t be discussing this, Sunshine; you would’ve left already. All I did was express my discontent with how reality played out differently from how I’d planned on things going.” This, to Shiro, sounds like the perfect call for Adam to drop the issue and leave it alone henceforth.

Instead of following the cue, though, Adam throws him a _Significant Look_ so pointed, it could chisel marble.

Rolling his eyes, Shiro explains, “I had _planned_ to talk to Obaasan about something that I shouldn’t discuss with you—but it isn’t personal. I shouldn’t talk about this issue with _anybody_, especially not on campus.”

Adam hums, considering this. “Alright. So, what’s on your mind about how you’re flirting with a student?”

Shiro’s jaw drops faster than a cartoon anvil plummeting onto its victim.

Unruffled, Adam takes a long swig of coffee from his thermos. “You haven’t exactly been _subtle_—at least, not to those of us who really know you. I figured out what you’ve been up to when you kept asking me to tell you which combinations of colored pens and pencils looked nice together—”

“Oh my _God_, Lotor **_told_** you, didn’t he—”

“_Most_ of the deduction was my own.” Adam huffs. “He provided some additional context, such as telling me how your beau’s been making you see colors—”

“That is _so_ not your business, Adam—”

“Something that’s _this important_ to one of my best friends? Absolutely _is_ my—”

“Is your name Takashi? Is it _Keith_? Because unless you’re one of _us two_—”

“What part of _best friend_ are you ignoring the significance—”

“What part of _Keith and I could get in trouble if people talk too much_ are you—”

“Aside from the colors part and Keith being a student, Lotor really didn’t tell me that much about your mystery guy—”

“He is _not_ a **_mystery_**_!_” Traitors to the end, Shiro’s cheeks flush hot. That only gets worse when Adam smirks as if he’s already won a game they didn’t mutually agree to play. “I have _not_ been flirting with him. What sort of idiot do you think I am?”

Adam snorts. “The sort of idiot who’s six-foot-four and perpetually weak for a good-looking smart-ass. I thought that was obvious.”

“_Obaasan_,” Shiro whines, mostly in jest. “Adam’s being _wrong_; make him _stop_.”

For a moment, she lets Shiro think she’s going to give him that request. Then, without looking up from the email she’s typing out, Obaasan decides, “Why should I make him stop when he’s only telling the truth?”

Watching Adam preen makes Shiro twitch with distaste.

“Besides, Kashi,” she continues, “unless you’ve started drawing flowers for all of our other students as well, I would absolutely classify your recent artistic endeavors as _flirting_. Also, as delightfully postmodern, but that’s neither here nor there, as far as your romance is concerned.”

“There _is_ no romance—”

“Everything about the situation says otherwise—”

“Oh, shut _up_, Adam.” Wrinkling his nose, Shiro tries to dream up a plausible denial. Unfortunately, he only comes up with a blank space where his brain’s supposed to go. So, short of telling the truth, distraction is probably Shiro’s only _decent_ option: “Anyway, what’s that _postmodern_ bit supposed to mean? Are my flowers shooting up morphine with William S. Burroughs or something?”

“She’s probably referring to the color combinations.” In the face of Shiro frowning, Adam snickers. “Have you looked at any art by Keith Haring since you started seeing colors? Or pretty much anything that Ezor ever wears?”

Shiro’s grimace deepens; it starts to hurt his face. “What did you do.”

“Oh, nothing much.” Adam shrugs. “I just helped you make something visually memorable—”

“He means that he has helped you select particularly vivid colors for your drawings,” Obaasan explains, most likely directing her sigh at both of them. “They may not always mix particularly well with each other, but I enjoy the overall effects you’ve created with them.”

Dimly, it occurs to Shiro to point out that _Keith_ might not enjoy how visually offensive he’s apparently made his flowers. Somewhat less dimly, he wants to snap at Adam and inform him that, until further notice, he is Officially The Worst. Both propositions might garner pushback from him and Obaasan, but at least Shiro would get to vent a little.

Except not today, because he needs to finish lunch and head for the graduate assistants’ office.

Normally, Shiro wouldn’t have office hours scheduled for a Thursday afternoon, but with finals looming, he needs to make himself available. Too many students fear taking their concerns to Obaasan directly, much less asking her for help. By the time he closes up, he still hasn’t heard anything from Lotor. That sets his nerves on edge, but Shiro heads for the library anyway. Excluding Obaasan’s office, that’s one of the safest places on campus, so whenever Lotor’s ready, he should find Shiro pretty easily.

Settled at a table in an upstairs back-corner, over by the shelves upon shelves of literary criticism that he almost never sees anybody checking out, Shiro lets himself lose track of time. Sure, the sky goes dark outside the window—but he could do worse than getting a bit swept up in grading the latest round of reading responses. The sooner he clears them out of the way, the sooner he can finish his term papers for Dr. Dos Santos and Professor Montgomery. As he nears the bottom of his pile, though, Shiro glances up and spots it, right there.

Swanning through on mile-long legs and shaking out a mop of dark hair, a slim figure flits into the stacks.

Any other time, Shiro might leave well enough alone. Plenty of people on campus have long legs and wear dark jeans—except the world around him flickers. He gets that increasingly familiar twinge behind his eyes. Shiro wasn’t thinking about the boy who makes that happen to him, so Keith very well might be around here.

Shiro doesn’t hesitate; he throws himself to his feet and darts down the aisle where the figure disappeared.

About halfway down from Shiro, Keith frowns at a tiny slip of paper in one of his hands, then squints up at the shelves. He sighs with an exasperation that Shiro knows all too well. Hunting for the right books always drains you after too long, and maybe Keith’s been at this for a while. A loosely tied zip-up sweatshirt sags down Keith’s waist, getting close to his hips. Shiro almost bolts at the sight of Keith’s hair, though: acquiescing to the library’s sweltering heat, Keith tied his hair back in a high ponytail, and oh, _damn_, the exquisite curve of his neck makes Shiro briefly forget how breathing works.

It’s probably weird for Shiro to notice Keith’s neck like that, but since when has he ever been _normal_?

Edging toward Keith, Shiro moves as quietly as he can manage. No good in scaring Keith off, especially not when he’s grimacing at the shelf so much. On the other hand, he doesn’t notice Shiro swooping in by his side, so maybe Shiro could’ve moved more quickly.

“Hey, stranger,” he says, and puts on a smile when Keith jumps. “What are you looking for?”

For a good moment, Keith’s eyes stay wide, and Shiro doesn’t trust his read on them. He picks out anxiety, and disbelief, and something not entirely unlike shame—but before Shiro can think too hard, Keith shakes his head. “Nothing, just—Dr. Shirogane? She recommended something—when I went to see her earlier? She suggested something else for my paper, but I can’t…”

The way he trails off makes Shiro’s chest ache. “Do you want some help with that, or…?

Keith nods, turning back to the shelf. “So, I’m writing about Foucault, right? Running with some of the arguments that Halperin makes about him, building on them, all of that.” He sighs, glaring at the books before him. “Dr. Shirogane looked at my last draft, and when we talked, she suggested some essay he wrote about watching your one-night stand leave in a taxi? But she didn’t give me a title—she kinda blanked on it, so it’s not like she didn’t _try_—and I’m pretty sure none of that fits with the only book of his that’s over here.”

Leaning a bit closer to him, Shiro pouts at the books. “Yeah, _Power/Knowledge_ has some good stuff, but—”

“But nothing that sounds as intimate as what Dr. Shirogane told me to look for.” With a huff, Keith shakes his bangs off his face. “Then, you’ve got _The History of Sexuality_ and _Discipline and Punish_ a couple shelves over? But if it were in _either_ of those, I would’ve asked Kolivan what Foucault thought he was talking about back in high school.”

“He waited that long to give you Foucault, huh?”

“Only those books specifically. _Remarks on Marx _was, I think, seventh grade? And he gave me _Herculine Barbin_ and _I, Pierre Rivière_ not long after—”

“When you were, what, thirteen?”

“Not verbatim, but the gist of his idea was, ‘Well, nephew, since you’re being so edgy at me, I’m going to direct your edginess into something that I personally find constructive.’” Keith shrugs like it’s really just that simple. “You can help me find it, though?”

Shiro nods and motions for Keith to follow him. “Whoever told you to look over here put you in the wrong place,” he explains. “The Library of Congress system keeps our _Politics, Philosophy, Culture_ over in more general philosophy, not social sciences.”

“The Library of Congress system can suck my dick.” Not that this keeps Keith from tailing Shiro through the stacks. “God, why is it so wrong to want all the books by _one author_ to share a shelf?”

“It isn’t wrong, but different people prioritize different aspects of organizing the library.”

“Don’t tell me you _agree_ with how they’ve laid everything out, Shiro. It’s impenetrable.”

“Uh…” Leading them into the _‘B’_ shelves, Shiro takes a deep breath. “No comment on the Library of Congress system, but… From the way you’re talking, you’d hate the way my bookshelves come together. I group my books by emotional associations and rules that I freely admit make no sense.” Good thing Shiro has the call-number they want saved in a note on his phone. That gives them some direction—but as he turns to the right shelf, he notices the pointed, scrutinizing arch of Keith’s eyebrows.

Wilting, Shiro shrugs. “…I do keep all my hard-copy Foucault shelved together, though—”

“Yeah, _exactly_. Because you’re a sane, rational person—”

“You wouldn’t say that if you saw the rest of my shelves.” Shiro snorts, scanning the spines for the title that Keith needs. “Tell me how sane and rational I am when you see that I keep my tenth anniversary edition of _American Gods_ next to _Goblet of Fire_, _The Stars My Destination_, and the first three _Song of Dragons and Incest_ books.” Met with bemused silence, Shiro explains, “The summer that _American Gods_ first came out was also the summer that _Goblet of Fire_ came out. _A Storm of Swords_—the book with the Red Wedding—came out the previous November, but Obaasan hadn’t let me read it yet—”

“Because you were, what? Ten or eleven?”

“Twelve when it dropped, thirteen by the summer.” Shiro has his hand on the exact right book—but rather than pull it out for Keith, he tries to drink in all the details of Keith’s face. As usual, he radiates the sort of earnestness that other people rarely ever do, which makes sense. Lying about how old he thinks Shiro is—or was in summer 2001—wouldn’t fit Keith’s style. “Obaasan’s objection had nothing to do with my age; she introduced me to those books in the first place. It was more on how I’d been acting out… lashing out… being an obstreperous, tweenage shit…”

“No offense, Shiro, but I have the hardest time imagining you being even half that bad.” Keith huffs and leans against the bookshelf. “Unless you’re gonna tell me that, all this time, your grandmother’s been the sort of person who uses, ‘obstreperous’ and, ‘acting out’ to mean things like, ‘Stood up to me about wanting to go to a party.’”

“If I _had_ directly stood up to her, she might have objected less. As it stood…” Shiro takes the book, but joins Keith in slouching on the stacks. “I was more in the habit of defying her—and Ojiisan, and my aunts, and Uncle Mitch and Bennett—by, for example, uh? …Sneaking out and climbing down the trellis by my bedroom window? Usually wearing just a tank-top and a pair of old jeans that I’d cut off into shorts—”

“That isn’t so bad, like? Teenagers break curfew all the time—”

“The shorts only went down to about here.” Shiro traces an invisible line across his upper thigh. “If I’d worn those shorts to school, I would’ve gotten sent home for violating the dress code. Technically, the rule was meant for girls, but, uh…”

“Basically, you tested the gender-tailored nonsense with your teeny-tiny sneaking out shorts, and some teacher enforced the rules equally for once?” Folding his arms over his chest, Keith nods. “I can almost respect that. The teacher enforcing the policy fairly, I mean, not the fact that it existed in the first place.” His hair drifts back onto his face and this time, Keith tucks it behind his ear. “Y’know, I came into Dr. Shirogane’s class with high expectations for her, so I kind of thought I’d end up disappointed? But the more I learn, the more I get why Kolivan respects her so much—aside from her academic work, I mean. Leave them alone and they’d probably get along like no one’s business.”

“Are you trying to arrange a playdate between my grandmother and your uncle?”

This makes Keith snort, which in turn makes Keith smile, which very nearly makes Shiro drop dead on the spot because Keith’s so pretty that Shiro’s heart forgets how to function. It should, in all honesty, be illegal for someone to be even half as pretty as Keith. How Shiro stays on his feet, he can’t explain. How he keeps his hands to himself, he chalks up to his grandfather and how many times Ojiisan ever heaved an exasperated sigh and told him, _“Remember, Kashi: patience yields focus.”_

“I just think Kolivan and Dr. Shirogane could be great friends,” Keith supposes. “She gave you fantasy books full of death and sex and incest—”

“Yeah, but she read them with me, though. She wanted to provide context and explain the parts I didn’t quite get.”

“That’s exactly what Kolivan might’ve done. Like, when I was ten, he spent summer break teaching me to pick locks so I’d have supervision while doing it—y’know, instead of, like…” Keith rubs at the back of his neck, almost looking guilty. “Instead of letting me break into the neighbors’ house and sabotage their radios and CD players so the Queen Bee next-door couldn’t keep blasting ‘I Kissed A Girl’ at all fucking hours.”

Shiro shouldn’t chuckle, but he allows himself that much anyway. “Not a Katy Perry fan? Or do you mean the Jill Sobule song of the same name?”

Keith shudders. “Emily Howard was in my class at school, okay? She _knew_ I hated that song—the Katy Perry one, obviously. Hearing it sent me to sensory Hell, and I _hated_ how she—_both_ of the she’s, Katy _and_ Emily—acted like being queer was all some big joke.” He shifts, kneading his shoulders against the bookshelf. “Neither of my uncles could marry the men they love, yet. Thace felt like he _had_ to be closeted at work because he didn’t trust his department head not to come up with any excuse to fire a gay man. Teachers didn’t stop anyone from bullying kids they thought were queer; some of them even joined in…”

Letting his head droop, Keith makes a phenomenally tired sound. “But breaking and entering is all quote-unquote _illegal_, and it wasn’t an organized protest that I might’ve gotten away with. Kolivan didn’t want me getting in trouble, so rather than enabling me in telling people off like usual…”

Keith shrugs as though he’s made his meaning self-evident.

Logically, Shiro knows that Keith has—but for the life of him, he can’t imagine what to say.

“Wish Kolivan had prepped me on what the fuck this Foucault essay is.” Keith sighs, breaking up the silence for them. “He threw so much Foucault at me when I was growing up but totally skipped the one your grandmother mentioned.”

“‘Sexual Choice, Sexual Act,’” Shiro rattles off without needing to think about it—which is good because his brain increasingly feels like semi-sentient jello stuck inside a hornets’ nest. He’s still talking, though. That’s probably good, right? Keeps the conversation moving, even if that probably ends with Keith running off again. “It’s actually an interview, not an essay? If you’re confused—I mean, do you want me to spoil how the part Obaasan told you about comes up?”

Keith purses his lips. He hums. As he shakes out his ponytail, the air between them crackles. When he nods, Shiro has to choke down a sigh of relief. Why he’s so eager to keep talking—fuck if he knows.

“So, to start, the interviewer asks Foucault why queer literature tends to be so much more sexually open and explicit than love stories about straight people—”

Keith snorts. “Somebody never read _The Well of Loneliness._ Or _Nightwood_. Or _Summer Will Show_—”

“Maybe, but that’s also a _very_ narrow view of queer women’s literature. You’re missing things like the _Beebo Brinker Chronicles_, _The Price of Salt_, _Odd Girl_—” But Shiro cuts himself off, dragging his fingers through his forelock. None of this gets at his point. “What I mean is: there’s actually a decent amount of sex in queer women’s lit, if not as much as you see in the queer men’s lit of Foucault’s day. Otherwise, he likely wouldn’t have fielded the question at all.”

“So, when does the part about the taxi come in?”

“At first, Foucault talks about the difference between what straight and queer writers tend to emphasize when writing about relationships. For straight people—or so he argues, whether or not it’s entirely true—so much of their literature focuses on courtship, on the process of making someone fall in love.” Keith furrows his brow, then arches one so high, it nearly escapes his forehead—but Shiro presses on, telling him, “According to Uncle Michel over here, this privilege did not find its way to queer folks—”

“What about Oscar Wilde?” Keith huffs indignantly. “He and Bosie wrote some pretty beautiful letters to each other, right? Or what about the basically married lady poets we read about for class, Charity and Sylvia?”

“Well, in the latter case, I’d guess Foucault didn’t know about them. I mean, the poetess aunt of an American poet, who didn’t have any overseas success like Poe and Whitman? Why _would_ he have known about Charity Bryant?” The former point, though, requires a moment of silent pondering before Shiro can decide, “Either Foucault didn’t really know about Oscar Wilde’s love letters, or he might’ve dismissed Wilde as the rule-proving exception—”

“I mean, okay? Not unfair, especially if you want to talk about _privilege_.” Keith tilts his head back and says, “Oscar was a white, Anglo-Irish man of serious financial means and social capital. You can’t really compare his situation to Andrew Holleran’s or even to James Baldwin’s.”

“Definitely not.” Damn everything, Shiro wants to reach out and touch Keith’s shoulder. He wants to brush those bangs back behind Keith’s ear. He wants to get the best of all possible looks at Keith’s face. He wants so much—but he needs to keep his hands to himself. He needs to stop looking at Keith like this. He needs to stay his determined course and refrain from acting on any of these untoward desires.

So, hoping to distract himself enough to keep behaving, he makes himself say, “Foucault’s whole idea is that queer relationships tend to start with the main action, with sex, because courtship risks discovery. We don’t have the privilege of dragging out the process; we have to cut to the chase. Our seduction becomes bold, open about what it is—”

“God, what would he think about Grindr, if he could see it?” Keith flips his hair and Shiro feels so overwhelmed, he almost faints. “It’s so up Foucault’s critical alley, right? Probably up his sexual one too, from the sound of it? Like, his biases have got to come from _somewhere_ in his life.”

Despite telling himself to be good, Shiro giggles. “I can only imagine—”

“But yeah, you were saying?”

“I was saying that, according to Foucault’s idea, queer literature focuses so much on sexual acts because those are, to him, the most emotionally heated part of our relationships. After all, the threat of discovery and the assumed ensuing violence means we can’t afford courtship, so sex is what we have.”

Not that Shiro can relate to such sentiments right now, tracing his eyes up and down Keith’s whipcord frame, wishing that he could glimpse Keith’s muscles in their full glory, even just once. Maybe if Shiro moves, shuffles somewhere else, he’ll feel less inclined to reach out and touch—but as he leans against the shelf opposite Keith, Shiro curses himself for thinking this angle would improve anything. The space between them makes touching Keith harder, sure, but Shiro should’ve known better than to let himself get a good spot for looking at Keith’s hips full-on.

Still, he makes himself go on, “Then, the interviewer remembers something that Casanova once wrote, about how the best moment of life is when you’re climbing the stairs to your beloved, which I _guess_ is about knowing that all your work at seduction has led to this and you’re about to get the good stuff. Uncle Michel sure emphasizes the anticipation of it all.” This makes Keith snort again, and Shiro can’t entirely blame him for that. “Foucault’s response, though, is that, ‘the best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi.’”

Keith considers that for a moment, then deadpans, “So, he’s an ass man, is what you’re telling me.”

Here, Shiro should laugh. At the very least, he should manage a chuckle that Keith could keep like a dirty little secret.

Yet, Shiro shrugs instead. His voice hasn’t gone, but he can’t even cough up the ghost of a laugh. “Maybe, but the interview doesn’t get into that,” he says. “He ties it all back to the writing by saying that for the great queer writers—he lists Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, and William S. Burroughs, and I’d add DH Lawrence, Baldwin, and a host of others—for writers like us, reminiscing is more a part of our romantic and sexual lives than anticipation. Love doesn’t precede sex, allegedly, but comes when the guy we’ve slept with has left and we start reminiscing about the way he smiles, the warmth of his body, all of that.

“Which, just to be clear, Foucault insists is a function of queer people’s positions in the social and sexual landscape, _not_ something intrinsic to our beings. Then, he starts getting into stuff like why S&M was so popular with queer men at the time, but…” Shiro sighs. “He doesn’t really touch on soulmates in the interview, but they never get brought up for him or directly asked about, either—”

“Sounds like some homophobia,” Keith supposes. “‘Why would we ask the gay man anything about soulmates? It’s not like he _knows_.’”

“Could’ve been the case, but it also could’ve been that factoring in soulmates would’ve threatened his thesis, maybe even undermined or dismantled it.” Shiro should shut up. He should stop talking. His heartbeat echoes in his ears and his throat, thundering that stupid organ’s warnings that he needs to stop talking before he says too much and outs all kinds of things that Keith doesn’t want to hear—“I mean, if Foucault had included soulmates in his figuring, then he would’ve had to acknowledge things like the longing that comes when you find someone special and wonder if he _might_ make you see colors.”

“As if you’d even know what that feels like, at first.” Keith folds his arms over his chest and worries one palm up and down his bicep. “_General_ you, I mean. Not, like, specific, ‘_you_, right here, Takashi Shirogane’ you.”

Shiro nods, because he gets Keith’s meaning—but the fact that they needed this sort of clarification? Clearly, _obviously_ means that Shiro needs to stop. As soon as possible, he needs to shut his mouth and never open it—“There’s the Samuel Delaney thing, too. What he got at in his _Twin Times Squares_, the part about the class-mixing that went on in queer men’s cruising spots before Giuliani ruined queer culture in Manhattan. How every hookup posed a chance to find your soulmate, and you wonder what you should look for, going over the lines of guys and wondering what it might take to wake up your brain and eyes.”

Inhaling deeply, Shiro tells himself once more to shut up—but his mouth’s on a roll, saying for him, “There’s the anticipation of thinking you’ve found the right person, but you can’t tell if he feels the same way… Seeing colors, but they go away, and wanting to be around him so you can see them again… Dreaming about what you might even say to him—”

“Shiro?” Keith’s eyes go wide and starry. The world around him flickers bright, then goes gray again. He whispers, “What are you…”

“I guess I can’t blame Foucault for writing about what genuinely interests him, or talking about it when given different prompts,” Shiro says. “But it’s still sort of an oversight on his part, y’know? He purports to talk about queer relationships, queer desire, and how we, as queer men, experience relationships, but he doesn’t include how queer people deal with soulmates. How we feel when we think we’ve found somebody, and we _think_ that there’s something special happening, but he can’t—or maybe he won’t—”

“Shiro?”

“I’m sorry, Keith.” Maybe he didn’t intend to say so, but now that he has, there’s no sense trying to put anything back in the bottle. Forcing himself to meet Keith’s eyes, Shiro goes on, “I don’t know what I did to hurt you, or scare you off, or whatever I did—”

“Shiro, it’s not like—”

“I wasn’t trying to be untoward, or make you uncomfortable—”

“You _didn’t_—it wasn’t—I mean—”

“Please know that I only wanted to… to let you know—that is, to show you, like—”

“It’s just that—with you being, like—with your _position—_”

“All I meant with the flowers,” Shiro says, as calmly and evenly as he can manage, “was that I like you, and I’d like—I’d _enjoy_—no, wait, I’d be _honored_ to get to know you better, if you wanted?” In the hope of stopping all this over-talking that they’ve done, Shiro pauses. He waits for Keith to have a turn. Except Keith only blinks at him, face vacant and illegible, so Shiro carries on, “You don’t need to say yes if you don’t want to, or talk to me ever again, once this semester’s over. If you don’t want to tell me what I did wrong, or you don’t want to give me a chance to fix it, then… it will hurt? But I’ll respect that. I’ll back off, leave you alone, keep your name out of—”

The bookshelf cuts Shiro off. Rather, the impact does. Books rattle as his back thumps against the shelf. None of them come loose, thankfully. But Shiro didn’t fall. He didn’t push himself back here. His hands are hanging by his sides, not balled up in his shirt—

_Wait, what?_

Shiro doesn’t have time to answer that. Something warm and firm snakes around his front. Hips buck into his hips. Then, in the middle of his thought, Keith’s mouth collides with his own. He doesn’t even have time to gasp.

Not that any of this stops Shiro from kissing back, moving his lips on Keith’s lips, leaning down and tilting his head so Keith has a better angle of attack—and so he can give himself to this kiss more fully. Distantly, Shiro hears something flutter and drop to the floor with a dull _thud! _As Keith writhes against him, Shiro picks out another sound like something falling. He can’t think on it too clearly, though, especially not with Keith trying to such the air out of his lungs. Both hands freed—but wasn’t Shiro holding something?—he rests them on Keith’s tiny waist and lets his eyes slip shut.

He doesn’t open them again until they’ve paused for breath—but maybe all of this has been a dream. That would explain Shiro seeing more vibrant shades than the gray that surrounded him before. As he nudges Keith’s bangs away from his forehead, one thing draws Shiro in more than anything else.

“I could drown in your eyes,” he murmurs. “They’re so… purple? I think it’s purple?”

“Wait.” Keith pales, grip tightening on Shiro’s top. “You can _see_ that?”

Shiro nods. “They’re gorgeous, Keith. _You _are—”

Keith shoves off of Shiro, fumbles into the shelf behind him. His cheeks go death-shroud white, but his shirt, Shiro now recognizes, has a red design of flames amidst the black. Down on the floor, the red of Keith’s sweatshirt sears Shiro’s vision; Keith’s gone even paler when Shiro looks back to him. He trembles all over, unable to keep his eyes on Shiro, or on anything else.

“You…” Keith shivers. “You’ve seen them too? Colors—”

“Yes, but that wasn’t why I wanted—”

“Oh my God, you—you’ve seen them, I—this wasn’t—”

“Keith, it’s alright.” Shiro takes a small step toward him, holding out his hand so Keith can see it, so he can tell Shiro not to touch him, if he’d prefer not to. “You aren’t—neither of us has—we don’t need to worry? Everything’s okay, I promise—”

“_How could it possibly be okay, Shiro? _You’ve been seeing _colors!_ Over _me?_”

Shiro halts. He drops his hand. “I… Is that… Should I not—”

“This can’t be _happening,_ Shiro! We can’t—this isn’t—you could get…” Keith sucks in a deep breath, shaking his head.

He starts to say something more, then bolts down the aisle in perfect silence.

“Keith, wait, you—”

Shiro cuts himself off, watching Keith weave around the stacks. He stands alone as Keith’s pounding footfalls get quieter, then disappear entirely. Trying (failing) to ignore the ache in the middle of his chest, Shiro gathers up the book and Keith’s forgotten sweatshirt. Once he has his own things together, Shiro spots an abandoned table with a backpack and a jacket that he recognizes. With a sigh, Shiro scoops those up, as well. Just because he needs to stop going after Keith doesn’t mean he can just let Keith run off without some pretty important personal effects.

As he waits in line at the circulation desk, Shiro sends Lotor a quick text: _“Returning something to Napier. If you’re ready to go by the time I’m done, I’ll be over there.”_


	7. Chapter 7

Keith makes it all the way back to his dorm before he realizes: his sweatshirt isn’t tied around his waist. He doesn’t have his jacket, either—or his backpack, for that matter—and the world remains stuck in vivid Technicolor. Patting down his hip pockets, praying that he finds his wallet, Keith wonders if Hunk will let him borrow his DVD of _The Wizard of Oz_ tonight, now that Keith can appreciate why Oz allegedly looks so much different from Dorothy Gale’s home in Kansas.

He comes up empty-handed. No wallet, thus no student ID, therefore no way to get into the building—not that getting in would matter when Keith doesn’t have his room key, either. Shivering, Keith hunches around himself to try and preserve as much warmth as he can. Running into the cold and the snow, all because he kissed Shiro and the world lit up—isn’t this idiotic stunt just like him to pull?

Fortunately, Hunk swings by Napier soon enough and lets Keith in with him. Although Hunk pulls several faces like he wants to stick his nose in and figure out what’s going on, he doesn’t actually ask Keith anything. When Keith begs off for a shower, Hunk only supposes that he must need one after waiting outside, the way he did.

“Go figure,” he says with a huff, “the day when you end up being your most ungodly stupid about things with Shiro? Is the day we get a freak winter storm in Los Angeles.”

In the back of his mind, Keith realizes that he should have something—anything—that he can say to that. But right now, all he manages for Hunk is a shrug and a shake of his head.

Steaming in the hottest water he can handle, Keith almost lets himself calm down. Yes, he fucked up today. Yes, he put his tongue in Shiro’s mouth and his color-vision hasn’t gone away. Yes, Shiro said that he’s been seeing colors over Keith—but they could both be sick. This doesn’t need to end them. Shiro doesn’t _need_ to get in trouble over a student with a hopeless crush, who wouldn’t know how to give Shiro everything he deserves if someone handed Keith a step-by-step guidebook on the subject. Everything might still work out.

Except, when Keith gets back to the dorm, his sweatshirt and his jacket have mysteriously appeared, laid out on his twin bed. His backpack sits beside them, leaning against the wall. The Foucault that Dr. Shirogane recommended rests on top of them with a little post-it note attached to the front cover. Keith doesn’t recall checking that out for himself; he ran from the library in more than a bit of a tizzy.

On the note, Shiro’s familiar chicken-scratch reads, _“Message received. I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable. Please return this when you’re done; it’s checked out until the end of the semester.—Shiro.”_

Beneath the words are two smallish blobs. When Keith holds the paper up to his and Hunk’s lamp, they look like Shiro absentmindedly doodled a flower and a heart, then rushed to scratch them out.

Keith sighs, guilt writhing through his chest—but he has to stick this out. For real, this time. He can’t let himself do anything with Shiro. Skipping class on Friday makes Keith feel sick, but as long as he keeps his hands to himself, everything will be worth this pain.

Come Monday, the color-vision hasn’t gone away. Tuesday morning, it still hangs around. As he drags himself through breakfast, Keith considers skiving off again—but he can’t cut two classes in a row. Until he kissed Shiro in the library, Keith’s attendance record for this semester had been perfect. So, he drags himself to Montgomery Hall like an adult, and settles in one of the further-back seats that nobody’s claimed as Their Spot in the past several weeks.

It feels weird, sitting somewhere other than His Own Spot. It makes Keith’s skin crawl, watching Shiro from this far back, even more incapable of reading his expressions than usual, all because Keith can barely see them, much less come up with an interpretation. It hurts, seeing Shiro in an all-black outfit when Keith is certain—so painfully certain—that Shiro has worn other colors all semester and some horrible, wormy, selfish part of Keith still wants to see what those hues look like against the warm glow of Shiro's skin. He could make himself sick, hoping so hard that Shiro won’t notice him and, moreover, won’t try to talk about anything after class—but Keith _does_ hope for that, because he wouldn’t be able to say, “No” if Shiro offered to walk and talk again.

At least Shiro _doesn’t_ talk to Keith, once his grandmother dismisses everyone. Keith doesn’t spot him out on campus, either, and on Friday, it’s more of the same. By the last Tuesday of term, Keith’s nearly gotten used to the horrible, empty feeling in his chest, every time he looks at Shiro and knows that they can’t say anything to each other because it’s for the best. Shiro deserves better than potentially tanking his future career over a human mess like Keith.

If Keith had finished his final paper by that last Tuesday, everything would work out fine. He’d be able to cut the exam period on Friday, since Dr. Shirogane’s apportioned it off as time for everyone to work on their papers anyway, and then disappear into the aether, at least as far as Shiro’s life is concerned. Except Keith hasn’t finished anything; come Friday afternoon, he’s still hunched over his laptop in Montgomery Hall’s computer lab, banging out the last few pages and praying that he doesn’t cut things too close to the deadline. Yes, Dr. Shirogane requires hard copy submission as well as an email, and yes, she’s waiting upstairs in her office until six-thirty, but fuck, what a messy way to end this term.

Aside from everything that Keith messed up with Shiro, this semester has gone remarkably well. He can’t let things close out on any kind of sour note.

With maybe ten minutes left until Dr. Shirogane leaves campus for winter break, Keith barrels out of the computer lab. Rather than wait for an elevator, he runs up the seven flights of stairs as fast as he can. Thank fuck he doesn’t have much in his backpack today. He nearly misses his hard left into the department’s offices. Mercifully, someone put a stop to keep the door from closing and locking. As he bolts toward her door, he tries not to be too loud or make a nuisance of himself, in case anyone else is waiting here as well, lest he interrupt them in… Well, in _whatever_ they’re hypothetically doing.

When he fumbles to a halt in her threshold, Dr. Shirogane arches an eyebrow.

“Six-thirty was simply a rough estimate of when I _want_ to leave, Keith,” she says, beckoning him in. “I’m sure you can understand that I might not wish to stay on campus until midnight, waiting for my students to turn things in.”

“Yeah, but I—but you said—it’s just…” Panting, trying to regain breath-control, Keith stops just short of slamming into her desk. For all it sends chills to the pit of his stomach, he forces himself to meet her eyes. “I didn’t want to keep you waiting. Especially not if, like? If I’m the last one?”

“You aren’t, but that’s the limit of what I can tell you regarding other students’ performance in the course.”

He probably doesn’t need to nod, not even in understanding, but he does anyway. If nothing else, it makes sure she knows that he heard her, and he listened, and his silence only indicates that he has no idea what else to say.

Then again, she probably doesn’t need to ask that Keith shut the door or gesture at one of the chairs opposite her desk—but she does anyway, and Keith complies without question. If she’s doing mysterious, most likely unnecessary things as well, then Keith doesn’t need to feel any sort of bad about nodding. As he sits, the quiet of her office starts to grate his nerves, but it would, admittedly, be worse if he hadn’t just handed in his last piece of work for the semester. Freedom hits him like an endorphin rush, and for one glimmering moment, it feels like nothing Dr. Shirogane might say could ruin this high.

She folds her hands on the desk, tilting her head ever so slightly. “What happened between you and my grandson two weeks ago.”

At those words, Keith’s heart stops beating.

It starts up again before too long, fluttering back to life—but it _did_ stop, he’s pretty sure.

Just like he’s pretty sure that his brain has been replaced with stock footage of car crashes, all squealing tires and shattering glass. He splutters at her helplessly, digging for something to say, struggling to spit out anything that could give her an answer. He only falls silent when she holds up a hand.

“On the Thursday of our first unexpected snowstorm, Kashi seemed terribly on-edge.” Pushing her glasses back up her nose, Dr. Shirogane takes a deep breath. “Granted, bless him, this is not a terribly unusual state of affairs for Kashi and his anxiety. However, he typically does not get so much like this over one thing in particular. Rather, he tends to feel that he has too many things, all simultaneously demanding his focus and his energy, and this makes him stretch himself too thin—”

“We didn’t do anything wrong!” Keith flushes hot, letting himself sink in his chair. “…Or, I mean? _He_ didn’t do anything wrong, ma’am. I swear he didn’t. It was all my fault, and Shiro just… happened to be involved, I guess? Which wasn’t his fault, nor anything he did.”

Watching Keith curiously, she laces her fingers together again. By now, Keith’s done enough reading about colors to guess that he’d call her skin tawny—same as her grandson’s, or at least incredibly similar. Tawny, and weizened, and for all her knobby fingers _look_ too bony and too frail to pose a serious threat, Keith doesn’t want to tussle with them, not ever. For one thing, Dad would never forgive him for punching an old lady, not even in hypothetical self-defense, while Kolivan would be Forever Offended that Keith punched _this specific_ old lady.

For another, considerably more important thing, though, Dr. Shirogane probably has some unfathomable, magical strength coursing through her veins and muscles, shooting down her nerve endings, and bestowing on her the power to lift Keith by the throat and rip him apart without breaking a sweat, like a fatality move in _Mortal Kombat_.

Well, maybe that idea is the sleep-deprivation talking. Still, Keith wouldn’t put something similar past Dr. Shirogane.

Either way, she rolls her desk-chair closer and leans toward Keith. “I have no idea what you and Kashi did or did not do,” she says, so calmly that Keith could scream. This sort of calm, as he understands it, typically involves a shotgun being leveled at some poor idiot who Done Wrong by the calm person’s precious baby-girl—or by her beloved grandson, as the case may be. “That ignorance would be why I am _asking_ you what happened. After that Thursday, Kashi’s nerves largely subsided and miserable resignation replaced them. All that he’s told me? Was that he had terribly messed things up—”

“But he _didn’t_, though! It was all _my_ fault! You can’t…” Keith drags both hands through his bangs and tugs more intensely than he should. “_Shiro_ didn’t put his tongue in _my_ mouth; _I kissed him_. Whatever he told you—”

“He barely told me anything, that’s what I said—”

“Well, if he told you it was his fault, then he _lied_, okay? I was the one who didn’t hold back! I was the one who didn’t keep his hands off. Shiro isn’t like that—and, I mean, you—you would _know_, ma’am, you’ve… you’ve known him… known for _how_ long, you…”

Keith trails off, breath heavy and every inch of his body trembling. Despite his best efforts at eye contact, his gaze wanders all over Dr. Shirogane’s office. Practically everywhere his dart across her desk and bookshelf, he keeps stumbling not into signs of her academic honors, but into framed photographs. Two stand out by virtue of not having the same subjects as the others: in one black-and-white photo, a young couple stand beside each other, dressed in very fine kimonos; judging from the woman’s elaborate hair ornaments, they’re in their bridal finery, and judging from her smirk, they’re the younger versions of Dr. Shirogane and her husband.

The other of the two photos does have colors, albeit somewhat faded-looking ones, but it depicts another young couple in wedding kimonos. This young woman, Keith recognizes from seeing her splashed across Dr. Shirogane’s projected desktop all semester: Shirogane Noshiko, Shiro’s mother. Aside from his eyes and the softness of his jaw, the man beside her could almost be Shiro’s twin—but it takes Keith a moment to remember the old picture that Shiro showed him, several weeks back, the one of his father and Iverson, back when they were students at CalTech. Makes sense, Keith supposes, for Dr. Shirogane to have this picture and the other; wedding shots mean a lot to most people.

Every other photo around her office, though, either predominantly or exclusively features her grandson. One looks like it came from his undergrad graduation. Another shows Dr. Shirogane and a little boy in a sweater-vest standing before a chalkboard together. A different one looks like a candid shot of him sitting at a table with Dr. Shirogane’s husband, wearing a pair of glasses that (Keith hopes) have had the lenses popped out, very seriously examining his coloring book while his grandfather grades papers beside him.

Still another takes Keith a moment to identify, but after some staring, he _thinks_ it looks like Shiro and a pair of friends in what must be _Mean Girls_ drag. It can’t have been too long ago; the movie isn’t _that_ old, and Shiro looks only a bit younger than he does in the graduation picture. Given that all three of them look a bit messy, Keith guesses it was Halloween. Whoever his friends are, the pointy one who’s dressed as Regina George—pink cardigan, shiny black miniskirt, and t-shirt reading, _“A Little Bit Dramatic”_—looks weirdly familiar. The one dolled up as Gretchen Weiners added half-frame glasses and a silver Star of David necklace to his darker pink sweater and plaid khaki skirt, and hovers so close to Regina’s left-hand side that Keith wonders if they were sleeping together.

Then, there’s Shiro, over on Regina’s right-hand side, in a cotton candy pink shirt with long sleeves and a much lower neckline than Keith remembers Karen Smith wearing in the movie. In his cute little matching skirt, with an equally matching purse’s skinny strap draped over his chest, he gives the camera an innocent, perfectly vacant expression, as if he might soon insist that on Wednesdays, they wear pink, or that his breasts can always tell when there’s a thirty percent chance that it’s already raining.

One photograph that Keith gets stuck on looks like a shot of Shiro and his parents on some very different Halloween; Shiro’s Dad wears a Superman costume, Noshiko wears a Batman costume, and Shiro, probably three or four and held in his Dad’s arms, wears a pair of bright blue shorts bedecked with white stars, a red tank-top with goldish designs around the collar, a gold tiara with a red star in the center, and a pair of matching gold cuffs.

Keith squints at that picture as if he might find the true image hidden underneath this elaborate façade. That… The idea Keith’s having would certainly fit with what his parents are wearing… But, no, it can’t be—

“Wonder Woman was Kashi’s favorite superhero when he was younger,” Dr. Shirogane explains, slipping into the small, fond smile that she’s given Shiro in class a few times. “I think that phase lasted until Sailor Moon happened. Even then, though, Wonder Woman remained his second-favorite.”

Keith nods, uncertain what he should say, beyond the fact that he needs to say something. “That’s… cute? Unless it’s… Like…”

“He was so fond of Wonder Woman because she was brave, and strong, and strong-willed, like his late mother.” With a sigh, Dr. Shirogane tucks a stray piece of steel gray hair behind her ear. When she looks back to Keith, her expression doesn’t quite go cold, but it gives Keith the distinct impression that he does not want to screw around with her right now. “So, from what little you _have _said, am I to understand that you kissed my grandson, and then stopped talking to him?”

Keith fights down a groan, but he feels it clawing at the inside of his chest. “Ma’am, I… If you’re going to kill me for jeopardizing Shiro’s career? Can you please, I don’t know, make it quick, I guess?”

She frowns. “Why would I do that, exactly?”

“Because, I—Because Shiro’s your _grandson_, and you _love_ him, and he could get in _serious trouble_ if anyone finds out that he was kissing a student, even though I’m the one who—” Another swift gesture from Dr. Shirogane, and Keith shuts up.

“I was not in the library when this alleged incident between you and Kashi is meant to have happened, so anything that I said or did not say about it would count as hearsay—hardly enough evidence for anyone to cite against Kashi.” Both eyebrows quirked up, she gives Keith a _Pointed Look_ over the rims of her glasses. “If you had no such concerns about his professional safety, what would you _want_ to have with Kashi?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Keith shakes his head. “He wouldn’t want—especially not when I ran out on him, like—even if whatever’s going on…” He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter.”

She considers this for a moment, then tells him, “You could go _talk_ to Kashi, rather than assuming what he does or doesn’t want.” He splutters inelegantly, but she doesn’t let it faze her. “Today is the last day of the semester, Keith. You are not registered for any of my classes next term, and Kashi has already finished his part of the final grading—which, I might add, was borderline negligible in the overall grading rubric.”

As ever, Keith should probably have something—anything—to say. Yet, all he can come up with is, “…Ma’am?”

“He’s in the graduate assistants’ office. He planned to stay until seven tonight.” Waving at the door, she jerks her head in the direction of said office. “Go talk to Kashi before you make any rash decisions, Keith.”

Keith isn’t stupid enough to think that he has room to tell her, _“No.”_ Her grandson’s overall happiness likely matters more to Dr. Shirogane than one student’s temporary comfort. If nothing else, at least talking to Shiro will settle the matter. A definitive rejection—the only logical or likely outcome of this conversation—will let Keith move on. Sucks for him, Shiro stopped seeing colors, which means Keith didn’t find his soulmate after all. Or maybe Shiro thought he was seeing colors, but he was wrong. Either way, Keith is dying of some horrific brain infection, and everything is right with the world because someone like Shiro doesn’t have some invisible magic leashing him, on a soul-deep level, to someone like Keith.

Not that this makes it any easier for Keith to make himself go inside the GAs’ office. He hovers by the doorway, slumped against the wall. He paces back and forth in front of the office, and tries to will himself to go inside. He turns to berating himself when sheer force of will doesn’t get him anywhere, which is _fair enough_, because Keith’s being _stupid_, and he _deserves_ to hear somebody say it. Only a text from Matt shocks Keith out of his own thoughts: checking his phone when it buzzes, he sees the clock and it reads, _6:47_.

Shiro only planned to stay until seven. They’ll need time for the conversation. It’s probably now or never, right?

Eyes shut, Keith throws himself into the GAs’ office. Forcing them open, he stops in his tracks and stares.

There’s Shiro, seated at the table in the center of the room. Anyone else in his position would probably be grading papers at a time like this, or finishing one of their own. Instead, Shiro has a little black stylus in his left hand and a little black something-or-other in front of him. Even from the threshold, Keith picks out the tinny, eerie tune coming from the device on Shiro’s desk.

“_Pokémon Platinum_,” Shiro explains, voice soft. “I, uh…” He tugs on that floofy forelock. “You know you only needed to turn your final paper in with Obaasan, right? I mean, not that I won’t take it if you really want, I will, but _she’s _the one whose—”

“That’s not why I’m here.” It’s both blessing and curse that he shuts up so quickly. Now, Keith needs to figure out—“I have… no idea what to say? Or only part of an idea? But fuck, that’s almost _worse_ than having no idea, right? I…” Heaving a sigh, Keith makes himself look at Shiro. “Why are you still listening to this, Shiro? I’m pretty sure you should have, like? Told me to get out by now?”

“Is… is that what you really want?” His chair’s legs drag on the linoleum. “Because I _don’t_ want to kick you out, Keith.”

Shiro blinks at him like he’s waiting for something interesting to happen. Whether that’s an accurate read or not, Shiro’s at Keith’s side before Keith even notices him standing up. Gently, he tugs Keith the rest of the way into the office. The door shuts and Keith’s breath snags in his throat. His heart-rate spikes. Shiro’s so close to him now, and his body is so warm, and his chest—God, what would touching him feel like?

Shiro doesn’t linger, though; he shuffles back and perches on the edge of the table. No answers today, Keith guesses. Shiro opens his mouth, and Keith should let him talk, but—

“Were you joking?” He splutters, but at least Keith’s still breathing. At least he’s made words this time, instead of pointless sounds. “Are you really seeing colors? Around me?”

Shiro nods, and Keith’s knees threaten to give out. “I didn’t entirely notice, at first? Or I kept having headaches, and I wasn’t sure—”

“What, like, when it started building up?”

“Yeah, I didn’t think it could be happening. Not to me.” Shiro’s cheeks flush, and from his reading, Keith thinks he should call that color, “pink.” As if he can’t see Keith’s mouth falling open, Shiro bashfully ducks his chin. How is this happening? How can Shiro really be sitting here, telling Keith, “Before I started seeing colors around you, I thought I was better off giving up on the whole thing. Out of my friends, only two of us hadn’t found our soulmates: me and Acxa. Narti’s _blind_, so it’s not like she would’ve known on her own, but Rolo and Nyma only saw faded colors until she met them—”

“I have no idea who these people are,” Keith points out. “Good for them, though? Except for Acxa, I guess, whoever she is.” He shrugs. “Does she like girls? Lance’s older sister is single and…” Slouching, Keith shakes his head. “That’s not the point, is it?”

“Definitely not, but even if it were? Last time I meddled in Acxa’s personal life, she rearranged my bookshelves while I was out for Obaasan’s birthday— ”

“What a monster—”

“I know, right? She alphabetized them by subject, then author, then title—but she used the _Galra_ translations of the titles and subject headings. I couldn’t find anything for _weeks_.” Thanks to that playful smirk, Keith can’t tell if Shiro’s serious or not. Then again, if Shiro keeps looking at him like this, with his perfect eyes gleaming like he can’t believe Keith’s really here, Keith doesn’t know if he cares about being able to read Shiro’s face.

Shiro’s spelling out something pretty clearly, anyway: he’s spangled with wonder, ostensibly over Keith standing here in front of him.

“Anyway, I was ready to call it over and done with,” Shiro says softly. “Even my longest or best relationships haven’t led anywhere good. In romance, it’s like—”

“Nobody ever wants me,” Keith blurts out. His feet shift him closer to Shiro, toward the space between Shiro’s splayed legs. “Not for long anyway. They…” He shouldn’t get too close. He should keep his distance. He _should_—but something feels so inexplicably right about slipping between Shiro’s thighs. “Either people get what they want from me and then move on? Or they give me a chance and decide that I’m exhausting to love, or not worth the effort, or something else—and I don’t blame them.”

He chokes down a sigh. Before he can let Shiro get a word in edgewise, Keith whispers, “I know my mom loves me. She fought the school board for me when I was a kid, y’know? Took it all the way to lawsuits and shit, just because a few teachers hated having her son in class. But still, I…”

“It would’ve been nice to have her around more often?” Nodding makes Shiro look like he could cry. “I’m sorry, Keith.”

“It’s okay. Or anyway, it’s not your fault.”

“You deserve so much better than feeling like a burden, though.” The crazy thing is, Shiro makes Keith want to believe that statement. Maybe he won’t believe it as much as Shiro does himself, but Shiro makes having faith in Keith sound so easy, so natural, like he does it all the time. Reaching out to Keith, watching him with those perfect, glittering eyes, Shiro says, “I don’t see you like that.”

“But that’s why I ran away, though—or, y’know, why I pulled back, I guess. Why I—or I _did_ run from you, back in the library, so that isn’t really…” Keith trails off as Shiro squeezes his hand. It’s like Shiro’s telling him to take a deep breath. No, Keith doesn’t manage to steady his nerves, but he manages to look Shiro in the eye, no matter how much it makes his skin crawl. “I didn’t want you to turn out like all the others did.” He shifts closer still, just shy of his legs thwacking into the table. Dropping his gaze, Keith explains, “Soulmate or not, it was easier to run back behind a wall before you got a chance to leave me.”

Shiro squeezes his hand and warmth flares up in the pit of Keith’s chest. “Shouldn’t I get a say in how things happen, too?”

“No, you’re right, you should, but it wasn’t like I was _thinking_—or not that intensely—or—”

“I want to try with you.” Keith’s head snaps up. Shiro’s steady intonations, the earnestness in his voice, and when Keith looks at him again, Shiro sighs, two shades off from pleading. “We don’t have to run right into marriage or even into calling each other ‘boyfriend.’ We can go as fast or slow as you want. We’re both figuring romance out as we go, right? If neither of us has had a good time of it before?”

Keith considers that, then nods. “But what if you want things with me to move faster?”

“Then we’ll talk about it.” Another squeeze, and Shiro gives Keith a hopeful smile. “Same if you want to do anything different—”

“What, like it’s just that easy?”

“Yeah. In theory, anyway.”

“But we don’t even…” Keith’s bangs flop wildly as he shakes his head. “Fine, you’ve shared anecdotes—but that’s not the same as me _knowing_ you, Shiro. And you can’t know me from grading my opinions about the reading assignments. _Or_ from… whatever magic makes this whole soulmate thing work.”

“So, we start from square one and move forward,” Shiro tells him, and makes it sound like yes, this really could be easy for them. “Everything I’ve seen of you so far, I like. You’re clever, you’re resilient, you’re _passionate_. I _want_ to get to know you—but only if that’s what _you_ want.”

One more squeeze of the hand, like Shiro’s casting a good luck charm. “Give us a chance, Keith? Please?”

By way of an answer, Keith presses into Shiro’s personal space. He leans into Shiro’s chest and makes himself breathe deeply. Letting his eyes slip shut, Keith steals a kiss; if he could melt into Shiro’s lips and his embrace, and have Shiro melt into him in return, then that might make this moment perfect. As it stands, Shiro’s hand cupping so gently around his cheek gets them closer to perfection than anything else has in the past several months, if not longer.

“One more question, though,” he murmurs when they need to pause. “…What were you _thinking_? Your flowers—”

“That I wanted to get to know you. Maybe we couldn’t have done much while—”

“But the way you _colored_ some of them?” Just thinking about them makes Keith snort. “The colors were so _bright_, and they don’t really go together, and I mean, it _works_, but… why would you…”

Nudging some of Keith’s hair away from his face, Shiro shakes his head. “Friends who already have their soulmates,” he says. “Adam likes to think he’s funny when he’s being a pain-in-the-ass and _seriously_ childish.”

“Jesus, _‘childish’_? Have you been lying about how old you are?”

“I’m thirty-_one_,” Shiro whines and slips into a pout. “Seven-and-three-_quarters_, if you count how many birthdays I’ve actually had.”

“Oh, what_ever_, Old-Timer. Tell yourself whatever you have to.” Making Shiro look a little more pathetic, his floof wilts onto his forehead. With a smirk, Keith flicks at it. “So, can we start with dinner? Or do you have some AARP meeting to be at?”

“You’re such a brat,” Shiro chuckles, and tugs Keith in for another kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
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> As ever, I’m also on Discord (**amorremanet#5500**), Twitter (**[amorremanet](https://twitter.com/amorremanet/)**), Tumblr (**[amorremanet](http://amorremanet.tumblr.com/)**, though not quite as often anymore), Pillowfort (**[amorremanet](https://www.pillowfort.io/amorremanet)**), Dreamwidth (**[amor_remanet](http://amor-remanet.dreamwidth.org/)**), CuriousCat (**[amorremanet](https://curiouscat.me/amorremanet)**)—and I always love talking about Sheith and all that good, gay shit.


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